Beirut – The armed men were methodological and started their killing spree from the beginning of a street in the Qusoor district in the Syrian coastal town of Baniyas and worked down the block and built buildings before they came to Abu Ali's apartment.
The first to die were Abu Ali's neighbors, a contractor named Ibrahim al-ISS and his wife. Then Ibrahim Nuzha, a doctor, and his two sisters Nour and Hazar and her mother Wahibah Saloum came. After that were Abu Ali's sister Sahar and her two sons, tariffs and Firas. Then his neighbor, Munther Ali, and his wife Fatima. Everyone shot on the head with a fast ball.
The armed men knocked on Abu Alis door. When he opened it, they put the AK-47 on his chest and asked him for his name.
“The only reason why I escaped was that I was able to convince you that I was Sunnis and not an alawite,” he said.
The events in Baniyas, as they were told by activists, victims and local news reports, were part of a violent cramp of the blood closures in the last three days in the Syrian coastal areas, in which hundreds of human-The most of them were killed in civilians with the powers of the country with the new Islamist government and the militant.
The battles represent the deadliest attack on the armed forces of the new government since Assad's fall in December and a blood-soaked memory of the sectarian tensions that are the inheritance of the country's 14-year civil war. They also raise new questions about the ability of the government, led by Interim President Ahmad al-Sharaa, to prevent the country from transforming themselves into a sectarian war.
The majority of the fights took place in Latakia and Tartus, the coastal provinces that are the core country of the Syria's Alawites, a minority sense that constitutes around 10% of the population, but the members of which formed the backbone of the army and security forces under Assad. Attacks also spread on mixed communities in Homs and Hama.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a war monitor based in Great Britain with a network of activists in Syria, said that more than 700 people were killed, including 532 civilians who were executed, were executed in a wave of sectarian revenge.
Another war monitor, the Syrian Network for Human Rights, said that more than 240 people were killed on Thursday and Friday, including 125 civilians on Friday alone in executions that were committed by security forces.
The authorities blamed the unrest to the armed remains of the government of Assad, but admitted that some of the civil murders were the guilt of undisciplined factions or individual actors.
“The remains of the former regime tried to test the new Syria,” said Al-Sharaa in a television speech on Friday and asked the armed men to put their arms down.
“They attacked all Syrians and thus committed an unforgivable sin. The answer came and they couldn't withstand them. “
The bloodshed fears that the new authorities cannot contaminate violence and bring stability to Syria, a country that has been destroyed by the conflict since 2011.
Together with the United Nations and a number of human rights groups, reports of sectarian massacre have arranged for an international opprobrium from a number of regional and western governments.
It also drew comments from the Israeli Minister of Defense Israel Katz, who said that Al-Sharaa had removed the mask and revealed his true face: a jihadist terrorist from the Al Qaeda School, who commit atrums against the civilian population of the Alawites. “
“Israel will defend itself against every threat from Syria,” he said, adding that the Israeli military would remain in the areas of Syria that would take it and that Israel would not allow the separation chair to enter the south of the country.
The violence was triggered on Thursday afternoon when a convoy of the government troops entered a village near the coastal city of Jableh to record the numbers of Assad. After an argument with the villagers, the convoy went and was shot from a neighboring village in which 16 government fighters were dead.
This seemed to have been the beginning of a broader rush of Assad Loyist's, which started coordinated attacks on government positions in the northwest of the country and killed and imprisoned members of the security forces.
Shortly after these attacks, a former government representative of Assad, who mentions himself as a sign of the coastal brigade, published a video in which the Syrians were asked to reject the new government. In the meantime, the protests in areas dominated by Alawit broke out.
The government replied with a broader call to weapons, in which thousands of men from state -wide allies were used to the coast. It also used artillery and helicopters to attack and bomb areas of the remains of the Assad army forces, which some activists said. A widespread video that has not been checked by the time states that the armed men improvised by the government dropped an echo of the government of Assad.
A number of these factions then involved a pogrom against Alawit civilians, said residents and activists.
A video published in social media shows how armed men shoot unwigled men on the floor in a village in the province of Latakia. Another shows one shooter who chased after a apparently civilian and first shoots him into his foot, then into his leg, then into his chest. Another shows a fighter who tortures older Alawit men and orders them to bark for the camera. A video from the village of Mukhtariya shows corpses on the street, some without their clothes – all civilians, according to the Syrian observatory for human rights.
The videos could not be checked from the time, but activists said that the locations seemed to bring together rural villages near the Syrian coast.
“While I'm talking to you now, my niece's husband is in her house. They executed him in front of the family and nobody can even comfort them, ”said Adnan, whose family members live in the neighborhood of Qusoor, and he said that all Alawite inhabitants were killed by state -related armed men in the building. He held back his last name for fear of reprisals.
After the killing spree, the fighters systematically began to loot and burn houses and steal cars, said Abu Ali and activists. Local news said that around 200,000 vehicles were stolen in the middle of violence.
“After shoting my sister, I heard her, which charge the refrigerator and washing machine from home and drive away,” said Abu Ali. He sent photos of the corpses of his neighbors and his sister and their children in their houses.
The violence triggered a wave of shifting from Alawit dominated, with thousands of men at the fighting age fled to the hills to avoid the same fate as their co -religionists. Others fled to the Russian base in the Hmeimim near Jableh and begged for protection before they were embedded. In the meantime, relatives published the names and images of the people killed in violence. Others reported hectic calls from family members and friends who tried to find a way to leave the country.
Although many Alawites were relieved at Assad's autumn in December, many have remained a distance from the new leaders in Syria. As members of the Assad era members, Alawites have involved some of the worst violations of the rule of Assads against the rule of Assad. Many are now afraid of retribution of Sunni hard-line fractions that are part of the Assad forces.
At the end of last year, the government began a nationwide reconciliation drive to regulate the status of Assad-linked personnel. Since then, it has dissolved the security services and released civil servants, causing a large number of alawites without employment.
On Saturday evening, the government announced that it regained control of the situation and had commanded the Allied political groups to retreat.
It also means that for everyone who committed violations during the operation, there would be “fair legal proceedings” and that it had arrested those who “stole personal property during the recent events”.
“Those who bet on chaos do not yet see that the era of tyranny has ended,” said a statement by the Syrian Ministry of Defense on Saturday.
“For those who have not yet understood this, we will make it clear to them again” on the battlefield, it is said.