[9] Prior to the start of operations, Hafez al-Assad issued orders to seal off Hama from the outside world; effectively imposing a media blackout, total shut down of communications, electricity and food supplies to the city for months.

[13][16] Robert Fisk, who was present at Hama during the events of the massacre, reported that indiscriminate bombing had razed much of the city to the ground and that the vast majority of the victims were civilians.

Most Ba'ath party members were from humble, obscure backgrounds and favored radical economic policies, while Sunni Muslims had dominated the souqs and landed power of Syria, and tended to view government intervention in the economy as threatening their interests.

In October 1980, Muhammad al-Bayanuni, a respected member of the religious hierarchy of Aleppo, became the Islamic Front's Secretary-General, but its leading light remained 'Adnan Sa'd al-Din, the General Supervisor of the Muslim Brothers.

The chief ideologue of the Islamic Front was a prominent religious scholar from Hama, Sa'id Hawwa, who along with Sa'd al-Din had been a leader of the northern militants during the mid-1970s.

The resulting government repression included abusive tactics, torture, mass arrests, and a number of selective assassinations, particularly of prominent mosque preachers.

When a machine-gun salvo missed him, al-Assad allegedly ran to kick a hand grenade aside, and his bodyguard (who survived and was later promoted to a much higher position) smothered the explosion of another one.

An army unit searching the old city stumbled on the hideout of the local guerilla commander, Omar Jawwad (aka Abu Bakr), and was ambushed.

They carried out attacks, especially in the northern cities, on government buildings, cooperative stores, police stations, and army units, and provoked demonstrations and large-scale shutdowns of shops and schools.

The Brotherhood, having already benefited from training provided to Muslim militants in Iraqi army camps, was also assured of comprehensive assistance from Iraq in the form of weaponry and financial resources.

[34] By daybreak of the morning of 2 February, some 70 leading Ba'athists had been killed and the Islamist insurgents and other opposition activists proclaimed Hama a "liberated city", urging Syrians to rise up against the "infidel".

The military was mobilized, and President Hafez al-Assad sent Rifaat's special forces (the Defense Companies), elite army units and Mukhabarat agents to the city.

[40] Alawite military units loyal to Rifaat al-Assad, such as the Defense Companies, entered the city and indiscriminately massacred thousands of Sunni civilian survivors.

[42][43] Baathist dissident Akram al-Hawrani asserted that women, children and all Hama inhabitants irrespective of their political leanings were targeted indiscriminately during the regime onslaught.

[52] The satirical slogan "Asad 'alayya wa fil-hurubi na'amah (Against me a lion and in wars an ostrich...)" became popular amongst Syrian dissidents for Hafez al-Assad's comparatively muted response to the Israeli invasion of Lebanon the same year.

Charges in the war-crimes lawsuit included organizing extrajudicial killings, large-scale torture, sexual violence, mass-rapes, summary executions and forced disappearances.

Almost a decade later in August 2023, the Federal Criminal Court ordered the extradition of Rifa'at al-Assad, prompting Switzerland to issue an arrest warrant to prosecute him.