Iranian militias have reportedly seized more civilians’ homes in the cities of Palmyra and Sukhna, east of Homs, after forcibly evicting their residents, leaving them destitute, after the expiry of the period ‘granted’ by these militias to the local people, under the pretext that there are no official papers proving their ownership of these properties, or any lease contracts certified by the relevant government departments between the owners of these properties and the tenants.

SY24 reports that the militias have forcibly evicted over 20 families at gunpoint from eight residential properties owned by people now in exile outside the country, with the militias justifying their seizure of the properties by falsely accusing the owners of collaborating with or providing material support to ISIS, or of cooperating with Syrian opposition factions, of leaving the country in an illegal manner, and other fabricated charges.

The homes being subjected to this eviction process include those located in the vicinity of the Khadija Al-Kubra Mosque and near the technical secondary school in the city center, with the evictions taking place under the eyes of the local regime security forces of the regime, who ordered the people to comply with the Iranian militias’ orders and leave the area permanently and to never return to it. The families affected are living in a state of fear and anxiety, with most fleeing with their children to live with relatives in villages and towns in the surrounding area.

Since the beginning of the Iranian regime’s intervention on the side of Assad’s regime following the outbreak of the Syrian revolution in 2011, Iranian militias have seized a large number of homes, shops, residential and commercial properties in most of the areas they occupy, especially in Deir Ezzor and the surrounding cities and towns, with the aim of changing the demographics in these areas and settling the families of its foreign militias or the families of its local affiliates there, after converting their faith to the Shiite sect.

Local sources in Deir Ezzor told SY24 that the Iranian regime’s so-called Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) militia has seized more than 300 homes in the city of Mayadin and the surrounding villages and towns, in addition to seizing a large number of farms, areas of agricultural land, shops and factories, and seizing dozens of homes and warehouses for its own members and affiliated militias in the vicinity of the city.

The same sources noted that the Iranian militias have converted some of these homes into their own military headquarters, as well as converting some of the shops they seized on 20th Street, west of the city, into a garage for their military vehicles and cars, and have also stored large quantities of weapons inside some homes in the agricultural area, near the Military Security branch, and in Al-Waheeb neighborhood, east of the city.

At the same time, these militias have seized many homes in the Syrian-Iraqi border city of Al-Bukamal, settling a number of their Iraqi members’ families there, as well as seizing a number of mosques and turning them into Shiite mosques and guesthouses to receive those they call “pilgrims” visiting the supposedly “holy shrines” belonging to some of the holy companions of the Shiite sect.

It is noteworthy that the Iranian militias, which took over the area after ISIS withdrew from it in late 2017 have managed to seize a large number of houses inside the city of Deir Ezzor and prevented their real owners from returning to them, after fabricating charges against them of dealing with the Syrian armed opposition or ISIS, despite many of these owners having been persecuted and terrorized or dispossessed by ISIS.

In addition to all these crimes, the militias have also demolished some of these houses, especially in the working class neighborhoods and around the old airport in western Deir Ezzor, building new homes in their place and settling the families of their foreign members there in an effort to obliterate the city’s millennia-old history by destroying its landmarks and to eradicate the crimes it committed there to change its demography in favor of Tehran’s sectarian imperial project.

- SY24
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