Beirut – The gunmen were methodical, starting their uproar from the beginning of a street in the neighborhood of Qusoor in the Syrian coastal city of Baniyas and moving along the block, building for the construction of their house, before arriving at the apartment of Abu Ali.
The first to die were the residents of Abu Ali, a contractor named Ibrahim Al-ISS and his wife. Then Ibrahim Nuzha, a doctor, and his two sisters, Nour and Hazar, and his mother, Wahibah Salloum came. After that was the sister of Abu Ali, Sahar, and her two children, Fares and Firas. Then his neighbor next door, Munther Ali, and his wife, Fatima. Everyone fired with a quick bullet on the head.
The gunmen knocked on the door of Abu Ali. When he opened it, they placed the AK-47 on his chest and asked for his name.
“The only reason I escaped was that I managed to convince them that I was Sunni and not an alauita,” he said.
The events in Baniyas, according to the activists, the relatives of the victims and the local news reports, were part of a violent spasm of Sangria in the last three days in the coastal areas of Syria who saw hundreds of people, most of them civilians, killed in clashes between forces with the new Islamist leadership of the country and members affiliated with the former government of Syrian Basha Basha.
The battles represent the most fatal attack against the forces of the new government since the expulsion of Assad in December, and a reminder soaked with blood of sectarian tensions that are the legacy of the 14 -year civil war in the country. They also raise new questions about the government's ability, led by interim president Ahmad al-Sharaa, to prevent the country from becoming a total sectarian war.
Most of the fight took place in Latakia and Tartus, coastal provinces that are the heart of the Alauitas of Syria, a minority sect that constitutes about 10% of the population but whose members formed the backbone of the army and the security forces under Assad. The attacks also extend to Mixed Section communities in Homs and Hama.
The Syrian Human Rights Observatory, a War Monitor based in the United Kingdom with a network of activists in Syria, said that more than 700 people were killed, including 532 civilians, which, they said, were executed in a wave of revenge murders fed with sectarians.
Another war monitor, the Syrian Network of Human Rights, said that more than 240 people were killed on Thursday and Friday, including 125 civilians on Friday alone in executions committed by security forces.
The authorities blamed the riots to the armed remains of the Assad government, but recognized that some of the civil murders were the fault of undisciplined factions or individual actors.
“The remains of the old regime sought to prove the new Syria,” Al-Sharaa said in a televised direction on Friday, asking the gunmen to bed their arms.
“You attacked all Syrians and, therefore, you committed an unforgivable sin. The answer has arrived, and has not been able to resist it. ”
Blood spill underlines the new authorities that cannot contain violence and contribute stability to Syria, a country devastated by the conflict since 2011.
The reports of massacres with sectarian caused the international opprobrium of a series of regional and western governments, together with the United Nations and several human rights groups.
He also caused comments from the Israeli Minister of Defense, Israel Katz, who said that Al-Sharaa “eliminated the mask, revealing his true face: a jihadist terrorist from the Al Qaeda school, committing atrocities against the Alauita civilian population.”
“Israel will defend itself against any threat of Syria,” he said, adding that the Israeli army would remain in the areas of Syria that occupies and that Israel would not allow Syrian government troops to enter the south of the country.
The violence was activated on Thursday afternoon, when a convoy of government troops entered a village near Jableh's coastal city to stop the figures linked to Assad. After an altercation with the villagers, the convoy left and was criticized by a neighboring town that left 16 dead government fighters.
That seemed to have been the beginning of a broader onslaught of Assad's loyal ones, who launched coordinated attacks against government positions in the northwest of the country, killing and imprisoning members of the security forces.
Shortly after those attacks, a former Assad government officer with a group called himself the coat of the Costa Brigade launched a video that called the Syrians to reject the new government. Meanwhile, protests burst into areas dominated by Alawite.
The Government responded with a broader call to the weapons that saw thousands of men from armed factions allied to the government deployed on the coast. He also used artillery and scrambled helicopters to attack and bombard retention areas for the remains of Assad's forces that some activists said hit civilian houses. A widely shared video, which was not verified by the times, aims to show the governors affiliated with the government that leave improvised ammunition, an echo of Assad's government practices.
Several of those factions dedicated themselves to a pogrome against the Alauitas civilians, residents and activists said.
A video posted on social networks shows the gunmen who trigger indifferent to unarmed men who drag on the ground in a village in the province of Latakia. Another represents an armed man chasing what appears to be a civilian, first shooting him on his foot, then the leg, then the chest. Another one shows a fighter torturing major alauitas men, ordering them to bark for the camera. A video of the town of Mukhtariya shows bodies aligned in the streets, some without their clothes, all civilians, according to the Syrian Observatory of Human Rights.
The videos could not be verified by the Times, but the activists said the places seemed to compete with rural peoples near the coast of Syria.
“While I'm talking to you now, my niece's body is at home. They executed him in front of the family and nobody can come to comfort it, ”said Adnan, whose family members reside in the Qusoor neighborhood and said that all Alawite residents in the building were killed by armed men affiliated with the government. He hid his last name for fear of reprisals.
After the uproar, the combatants began to fallen and burned houses and steal cars, said Abu Ali and activists. Local news reports said about 200,000 vehicles were stolen in the midst of violence.
“After my sister shot, I heard them load the refrigerator and washing machine from her house and get away,” said Abu Ali. He sent photos of the bodies of his neighbors next door and his sister and his children in their homes.
The violence triggered a wave of displacement of areas dominated by Alawita, with thousands of men of struggle escaping the hills to avoid the same destination as their copeligionistas. Others fled to the Russian base in the HMEIMIM near Jableh, asking for protection from the guards before they were allowed to enter. Meanwhile, relatives published on social networks the names and images of those killed in violence. Others reported frantic calls of family and friends who try to find some way to leave the country.
Although many Alauitas felt relieved in the fall of Assad in December, many have remained at a distance from the new Syrian leaders. As members of the security services of the Assad era, the Alawites participated in some of the worst violations against those who oppose the Assad rule; Many now fear the remuneration of the Sunnite hard line factions that are part of the subsequent forces to the Assad.
At the end of last year, the government began a reconciliation campaign throughout the country aimed at regularizing the state of the personnel linked to Assad. But since then he has dissolved security services and fired public officials, leaving a large number of alauitas without employment.
For Saturday night, the government said he had regained control of the situation and ordered the allied factions to withdraw.
He also said that he would make “fair judgments” for all those who committed violations during the operation, and that he had arrested those who “stole personal goods during recent events.”
“Those who bet on chaos do not yet realize that the era of tyranny is over,” said a statement from the Syrian Defense Ministry on Saturday.
“For those who have not yet understood this, we will clarify it once again” on the battlefield, he said.
