Difficulties preventing students from Suwayda governorate (southern Syria) from reaching their exam centers disrupted the start of the exceptional examination session after official authorities announced that the exams would be delayed until 11 a.m., amid accusations that a number of students were prevented from leaving the governorate.

According to Enab Baladi’s correspondent in Suwayda, groups of students and parents who opposed the location of the exceptional exam session, along with armed members of the Shahba Operations Room, which is affiliated with the National Guard, blocked several points along the Damascus-Suwayda road, stopping buses carrying students and exam supervisors toward centers in villages in the northern countryside.

Student Sit-In

The correspondent reported that the groups prevented the buses from continuing toward the northern villages, where Syrian government forces are stationed, at several points including the Shahba checkpoint and al-Anqud roundabout.

Students and parents heading to the northern countryside were also subjected to verbal abuse, while gunfire was fired into the air in an effort to force the buses to turn back.

After the buses returned from the al-Anqud roundabout area, a number of students and their parents gathered at the Municipal Stadium roundabout in Suwayda city and held a brief sit-in to protest being prevented from reaching their exam centers. The protest included a partial road closure before the gathering dispersed.

According to Enab Baladi’s correspondent, the groups that stopped the buses intend to continue blocking the road throughout the examination period.

Suwayda Governor Mustafa al-Bakour said that “outlaw groups” had prevented students from leaving the city for the exam centers, according to Syria’s official al-Ikhbariya channel.

Exam Delayed

The governor added that tensions between students and their parents developed into physical altercations, which he said resulted in damage to several cars.

Al-Bakour added, according to al-Ikhbariya, that students remained gathered in the city square and expressed their desire to travel to their exam centers.

He said the relevant authorities had made efforts to facilitate the examination process and decided to postpone the exam by an additional hour to give students time to reach the centers.

The exceptional examination session for Suwayda students sitting the basic education and general secondary education certificate exams was postponed on Saturday, August 29, until 11 a.m. after a number of students were unable to reach their exam centers.

The Suwayda Media Directorate said the postponement was intended “to ensure students reach their exam centers,” adding that the delay resulted from “outlaw groups obstructing the movement of students on their way to their centers.”

Al-Ikhbariya also cited local sources as saying that groups it described as “outlaws” turned back a number of Education Directorate employees at the Shahba checkpoint and prevented student convoys from passing toward the exam centers.

The channel added that a bus belonging to the Education Directorate was damaged, while students in Shahba (Suwayda governorate) remained waiting for permission to leave.

Al-Ikhbariya also said that students from the governorate held a sit-in at the Municipal Stadium roundabout in Suwayda city to protest being prevented from reaching their exam centers.

Attack on Education Delegation

In the same context, al-Thawra newspaper quoted Qutaiba Azzam, director of media relations at the Suwayda Media Directorate, as saying that a delegation from the Education Directorate was attacked while heading to supervise the exam centers and was forced to turn back after the bus carrying it was targeted.

Meanwhile, al-Ikhbariya reported that a convoy carrying Suwayda students arriving from Rural Damascus reached the town of al-Surah al-Sughra ahead of their exams, amid the deployment of Internal Security forces, Civil Defense teams, and the Syrian Arab Red Crescent along roads leading to the exam centers, according to the channel.

The exceptional examination session was organized under Presidential Decree No. 163 of 2026, which granted Suwayda students who had been unable to sit the regular examination session an exceptional opportunity to take their exams following security events in the governorate in recent months.