On 18 July 2012, Shawkat attended a meeting of the military crisis unit at the headquarters of Syria's national security council in the Rawda Square of Damascus. There he was killed in a bomb attack along with Dawoud Rajiha, the defense minister, and Hassan Turkmani, the former defense minister and a military adviser to Vice President Farouk al-Sharaa. As'ad AbuKhalil, a California State University professor, argues that Shawkat was the key man in the group assassinated.