Radio host critical of Assad is shot dead in Syria

GUNMEN in Syria’s rebel-held northwestern province yesterday shot and killed a prominent anti-government journalist who also criticised jihadists.

Raed Fares’s Radio Fresh FM station provides news of the conflict to Syria’s northern provinces and is a source for international news outlets that have largely stayed away from the opposition-held areas.

His killing was a blow to the few independent voices that have continued to promote non-violence and democratic change in Bashar al-assad’s Syria.

In The Washington Post in June, Fares lamented that the US had cut funds to Syria’s opposition areas including the radio station he founded in 2013 in his home town of Kafranbel in rebel-held Idlib province. He said such a move would only feed extremism.

“As a journalist and activist, I felt I had a duty to counter the fundamentalist narratives that are spreading among people who have no other source for hope in our war-torn homeland,” Fares wrote. His station provided training and jobs for hundreds of young activists and citizen journalists.

Fares survived an earlier assassination attempt in 2014 when he was shot in the chest. He was also abducted and tortured by militants affiliated with alqaeda and his radio station was bombed by government warplanes.

Yesterday, Fares and Hammoud aljuneid, a fellow activist, died of their wounds after three men opened fire on their vehicle in a drive-by shooting in Kafranbel. Ali Dandouch, in the back seat, ducked the bullets and survived, he later said.

Social media tributes included Zaina Erhaim, a Uk-based Syrian journalist in exile, who wrote: “My friend and last hope for a better Syria has been killed after being let down by everyone.”