An oil pipeline near Tal Hamis was damaged on 7 October, a week after a gas line blast near Damascus took three power stations offline. What happened, why Syria's electricity supply is so exposed, and what it means for visitors.
Syria’s energy network was hit again on Wednesday 7 October 2026. The Syrian Petroleum Company said an oil pipeline near Tal Hamis in Al-Hasakah governorate, in the country’s northeast, was damaged in a sabotage attack at 6:00 that morning. It is the third attack or explosion on Syria’s oil and gas lines in little more than a week, and it comes while Damascus and the south are still living with longer power cuts after the previous incident.
According to the company’s statement, reported by AFP, maintenance crews were isolating the damaged section of the pipeline so that repairs could begin. The company said the authorities had arrested the alleged perpetrators and referred them to the judiciary.
The line near Tal Hamis carries oil, not the gas that feeds Syria’s power stations, so the attack is less likely to affect electricity directly than the incident near Damascus a week earlier.
The 30 September blast did the most damage to daily life. The Syrian Electricity Company warned that the lost generating capacity would lengthen scheduled power cuts, and outages spread from the capital to the southern provinces. Drinking-water pumping and purification stations were also disrupted, affecting services to hundreds of thousands of people in Damascus, rural Damascus, Daraa, As-Suwayda and Quneitra.
More than a decade of war under the Assad regime wrecked Syria’s oil, gas and electricity sectors and left the country heavily dependent on imported fuel. Much of the south’s power comes from gas-fired stations fed by a small number of trunk lines, including the Arab Gas Pipeline, so one damaged section can take several plants down at once. Deir Ali alone supplies a large share of the electricity used in Damascus and its countryside.
By 6 October, engineers were gradually restoring pressure on the Arab Gas Pipeline between Adra and Deir Ali, according to the industry body JOIFF. The attacks also come weeks after protests over rising fuel prices in September, which the authorities linked to higher costs caused by the regional war.
Scheduled power rationing is a normal part of life in Syria, and it has been longer than usual in Damascus and the south since 30 September. How long the extra cuts last depends on how quickly full gas supply returns to the three southern plants. Visitors staying in the capital should ask their hotel or host about backup power and hot water before arriving.
All three incidents targeted pipelines and energy sites outside city centres. For a wider view of conditions across the country, see our honest guide to whether Syria is safe to visit, and our Damascus travel guide for practical planning in the capital.
We will update this article if the authorities announce who was behind the attacks or when full power generation in the south is restored.
The Tishreen plant affected on 30 September is the Tishreen Thermal Power Plant in the Damascus countryside, not the Tishreen Dam on the Euphrates. Some early reports confused the two.