At least two people, a man and a girl, have been killed in a car bomb explosion in Jaramana, near Syria’s capital Damascus. Security forces cordoned off the area and say they are launching an investigation into the blast.
Published On 14 Nov 202614 Nov 2026
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Shortly after Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa’s visit to Riyadh last week, reports emerged that Damascus was aiding Saudi Arabia in its war against Yemen’s Houthis, an armed group also known as Ansar Allah (Arabic for Supporters of God) and backed by Iran.
Security and financial aid appeared to be the cornerstone of the meeting between al-Sharaa and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, which concluded with Riyadh pledging $403m in loans to help Syria rebuild infrastructure damaged by 13 years of its civil war.
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Syria’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Expatriates noted that cooperation between the two countries’ defence ministries was the “most notable” of the deals, but it did not elaborate.
Days after the visit concluded, media reports suggested Syria was sending fighters to Saudi Arabia to help fight the Houthis. The Reuters news agency reported that Syria was providing Riyadh with military advice and training inside the kingdom after Saudi cities were targeted in hundreds of Houthi missile attacks.
On Sunday, Syrian officials told The Associated Press news agency that Damascus has already sent Syrian military advisers to Saudi Arabia and 600 special forces were due to arrive in the kingdom next week.
Despite denying the initial reports, a Syrian government official told the state’s news agency SANA that Syrian soldiers were sent to Saudi Arabia in a “training, expertise exchange and military consultations” capacity.
“The Syrian role would probably count for more in Riyadh than on Yemen’s front lines because it would show that the new Syria can share a partner’s security burden,” Nanar Hawach, a Syrian analyst, told Al Jazeera, adding that even a training and support role from the Syrian government rather than a direct combat role would satisfy Riyadh.
“The reports and the denials can both be partly right since Syrian officers training Yemeni forces inside the kingdom is different from Syrian troops fighting in Yemen. If Syrian forces are involved, Damascus has good reasons to avoid acknowledging it, from avoiding retaliation to reassuring Syrians that rebuilding at home comes first,” Hawach explained.
Yemen has been a central concern for Saudi Arabia since Houthi fighters captured the capital, Sanaa, in September 2014. Saudi Arabia has led an Arab military coalition to support Yemen’s internationally recognised government since March 2015. It has provided material and air support to anti-Houthi forces.
Saudi Arabia has been eager to form a regional military alliance that would help counter the threats from the Houthis and their patron Iran.
Tehran’s attacks on its Gulf neighbours since the US-Israel war on Iran began on February 28 and recent Houthi missile strikes on Saudi cities have highlighted the need for a regional security umbrella.
The Mecca Joint Defence Agreement, agreed by Saudi Arabia, Turkiye and Pakistan in August, has been viewed as a mechanism for this collective defence by many in Riyadh.
Syria and its thousands of battle-hardened soldiers with some expertise in drone warfare would be considered a useful addition to this alliance. The Syrian official who spoke to SANA said the current military arrangement between Damascus and Riyadh could lead to Syria joining the Mecca Defence Alliance.
“Interest in the Mecca pact could reflect Syria’s wish to anchor its recovery in a regional security framework. Yemen is far enough away for Damascus to present any role as standing by an Arab partner while Lebanon is next door, and intervention would reopen its history there and risk destabilising Syria itself,” Hawach said.
“However, distance does not make it cost-free. Confronting Iran’s allies anywhere invites retaliation, and soldiers killed far from home would be hard to justify to a public that expects peace to bring recovery.”
Syria’s post-war government has already come under pressure to act militarily outside its borders. US President Donald Trump has spoken numerous times this year about trying to get Syria to intervene in Lebanon to help disarm Hezbollah, another Iran-backed group.
Syrian rebels have been deployed to other conflicts in the Middle East and North Africa during their attempts to overthrow Bashar al-Assad’s government from 2011 to 2024. Syrian fighters allegedly took part in Azerbaijan’s war against Armenia in 2020.
“Syrians are combat-experienced and -capable, and they’re cohesive, so there’s a potential tactical advantage there,” Rob Geist Pinfold, a lecturer on security studies at King’s College London, told Al Jazeera.
“Overall, this is very much a common Saudi approach to strategy and security issues, basically leaning on partners they courted through diplomatic links.”
Since the fall of al-Assad’s regime in December 2024, Saudi Arabia is believed to have been instrumental in helping the US remove Assad-era sanctions on Syria, which has been critical in legitimising the post-war government in Damascus.
With Saudi Arabia now fully embroiled in the Yemen war by backing its internationally recognised government and being targeted by regular Houthi air attacks, the deployment of Syrian troops would provide it with additional expertise and guidance on how to confront the Houthis.
The AFP news agency reported that Syrians in Yemen are now leading drone operations against the Houthis although the Syrian government has denied these claims.
Samy Akil, senior programme adviser with The Syria Report website, said Syria’s cooperation gives Riyadh another ally in the region and potential partner in the Mecca Defence Alliance.
“Syria has so far tried to navigate different competing regional interests across several regional capitals. It tried to not align itself with a specific camp, but I think as time goes on, it needs to kind of start settling on [a] hierarchy in terms of regional partners, and obviously, Saudi Arabia is one of the top contenders to do so,” he told Al Jazeera.
“It’s basically signalling that Syria is willing to support and help with the limited resources and capabilities it has, but it also inadvertently legitimises the Syrian government’s foreign policy approach of supporting regional countries and kind of showcase that it is not only a country that is asking for support, but it is also a country willing to provide support.”
With Israeli raids and attacks on southwestern Syria continuing, Damascus could also benefit from having a regional power such as Saudi Arabia as an ally.
“The fact is that Syria recognises that it has little policy options to deter a further entrenchment of Israeli forces into southern Syria in [the] hope that the potential of joining the [Mecca] agreement would act somewhat of a deterrence to, at the very least, stop further encroachment of Israeli troops in Quneitra and Daraa.”
Public anger in Syria has threatened to boil over following disagreements between Amman and Damascus over Jordanian attacks on the southern Syrian regions of Deraa and Suwayda on Monday evening.
Jordan said its air force had killed more than 20 ISIL (ISIS) fighters in retaliatory strikes on what it called “dens of terrorist organisations in southern Syria”, linked to suspects accused of being behind last week’s attack on a Greek Orthodox church in the kingdom, which was claimed by the group.
But the next day, anger mounted in Syria as images spread of a slain grandmother and her three grandchildren.
While Jordan has launched attacks on Syria in the past, including assaults that led to civilian casualties, this latest episode seems to have captured public anger.
“The anger also reflects an expectation that the authorities in Damascus should now be able to protect Syrians and demand answers when they are killed or harmed,” Navvar Saban, a researcher in security and military affairs at the Arab Center for Contemporary Syrian Studies, told Al Jazeera.
“If people feel Damascus is more concerned with protecting the relationship with the Jordanians than accountability, some of the anger could turn inward.”
Monday’s attack reportedly came in response to the assault on a Greek Orthodox church that killed nine people and wounded at least 34 others in the village of Hamoud in the Karak governorate, about 120km (75 miles) southwest of the capital, Amman.
Jordanian authorities said the attack was carried out by “extremist terrorists”.
Jordan’s King Abdullah II promised to respond with an “iron fist”.
“Jordan has absorbed many terrorist attacks before, but this one was especially brazen given the Christian church and the nature of the event being targeted,” Sean Yom, an expert on Jordan at Temple University in the United States, told Al Jazeera.
“Because of its unprecedented nature, explicitly targeting a protected Christian minority in the tribal heartland of Karak, the government instantly felt popular demands to show results from the investigation and arrest of the perpetrators. This pressure to be responsive is especially acute right now, because security and policing remain core strengths of the Jordanian state.”
Jordanian authorities arrested three men connected to the attack on the church on Monday. That evening, Jordan also launched the attack on southern Syria, which it said was carried out in coordination with authorities in Damascus.
But Damascus has contradicted that account.
The Syrian Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in a statement that it had informed Jordan of its “complete reservation” over the attacks, and said they took place “without prior coordination or notification with the Syrian side”. An official described the strikes as “treacherous”.
“Both governments have something to defend politically,” Saban said. “Amman wants to show that it acted against a serious threat through legitimate security channels. On the other hand, Damascus cannot afford to appear to have approved an operation that killed Syrian families. The investigation needs to establish who communicated with whom, when, and about which target. Until then, I would avoid either assuming Syria secretly approved everything or treating the coordination as a simple misunderstanding.”
The family’s bodies were recovered after they were killed by the Jordanian strike on a tent in the village of al-Taff, in the Lajat area of northeastern Deraa province. Syria’s civil defence said three other family members were wounded in the attack.
Meanwhile, in the al-Shayah farms near Nassib, in the Deraa countryside, an 80-year-old man named Riyad Karrad was also killed by a strike. Another man named Mutlaq Abu al-Khalil, 60, was killed in Shuhayb, in Suwayda’s northern countryside.
Syrian customs authorities closed the Nassib border crossing with Jordan on Tuesday, before reopening it to passenger and commercial traffic on Wednesday.
Jordan has launched several air strikes on Syria since 2023. It says those strikes generally target arms or drug smugglers.
Under the regime of former President Bashar al-Assad, southern Syria became the site of cross-border drug smuggling, including the stimulant captagon. Some of those operations are believed to have continued after the fall of the Assad regime. At times, the Jordanian strikes have killed civilians, such as a January 2024 attack that Human Rights Watch said killed women and children.
Since the fall of the regime in December 2024, relations between Amman and Damascus have been lukewarm, though slowly improving. Analysts say this is down to shared interests.
“Syria needs healthy trading and commercial partners like Jordan, and Jordan wants Syria to become more secure and coherent for three reasons,” Yom said.
“A strong and friendly Syria can accept more repatriated refugees from Jordan, where there are still hundreds of thousands. It can also help seal the porous border and prevent arms and drug smuggling activities along their shared frontier. And lastly, a stronger allied Syria helps Jordan resist Israel’s creeping annexation, including the West Bank as well as more parts of Syria and Lebanon. So both have mutual interests tied to their sovereignty in maintaining good relations.”
Amman was also the site of a July 2025 trilateral agreement signing between Syria, the US and Jordan aimed at resolving internal disputes over violence in Suwayda.
“Only days before the strike, the two foreign ministers were discussing a strategic partnership and preparing another meeting of their High Coordination Council that is a significant investment in the relationship,” Saban said. “My expectation is that this is a serious strain rather than a rupture. Both governments have strong reasons to keep cooperation over the border, armed groups smuggling, etc. But this incident raises an uncomfortable question for Damascus.”
For its part, Syria’s Foreign Ministry condemned the strikes as a violation of the country’s sovereignty but seemed to indicate relations with Amman would continue to be strengthened. It said Damascus is coordinating with Amman to establish a joint security committee to strengthen border security and prevent similar incidents.
In the meantime, Saban said that regardless of coordination with Damascus, accountability is needed to subside public anger.
“Even if an investigation established that Damascus approved some part of the operation, that would not explain why those people were killed or remove the need for accountability,” he said. “Ultimately, the families deserve a specific answer about the strike that killed their relatives, their friends, their family. Syrians need to understand why their families got killed.”