An armed man fires into the air during the funeral of a member of the Syrian security forces killed in an attack by groups loyal to former President Bashar al-Assad in Hama province on Sunday. (Bilal Al Hammoud/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock)
Hundreds of members of Syria’s Alawite minority, including women and children, have been killed in reprisal attacks after clashes between government forces and armed remnants of the previous regime spiraled into widespread sectarian bloodshed, monitoring groups and local officials said Sunday, presenting the most serious challenge to the country’s stability since the fall of the Assad dynasty in December.
Interim President Ahmed al-Sharaa, a former fighter known as Abu Mohammed al-Jolani and a Sunni Islamist, called for national unity Sunday as videos of mass executions and bodies piled in the streets of Alawite villages proliferated online. The scale of the violence in recent days was beginning to emerge: At least 624 people were killed, according to the Syrian Network for Human Rights, which has documented rights violations in Syria since the popular uprising against Assad rule in 2011.
Other local rights monitors reported similar figures and Alawite community leaders said they expected the toll to climb as more deaths are verified.
The killings have taken place largely in the coastal provinces of Tartus and Latakia — the heartland for Syria’s Alawite, the minority religious sect to which former President Bashar al-Assad belongs. The violence there escalated after a nascent insurgency, linked in part to former military figures in the Assad regime, staged a wave of attacks on government security forces last week.
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But what began as armed skirmishes quickly deteriorated into widespread attacks on civilians as armed groups leftover from the years-long civil war rallied and headed toward the coast.
Residents of the coastal region who spoke to The Washington Post described Sunni militants as roaming house to house, killing occupants in summary executions and pillaging what they could find. Some terrified residents managed to flee to neighboring Lebanon, while others hid in the mountains, forests and orchards.
“Entire families were being wiped out,” one doctor working in al-Qadmus, a town perched in the mountains in Tartus province, said of the bloodshed. She fled Sunday morning as the fighting continued. “They entered homes and carried out mass killings of all Alawites,” she said.
The doctor, who spoke on the condition of anonymity out of fear of reprisals, said the majority of the dead appeared to be civilians and that patients were arriving at her hospital with gunshot and shrapnel wounds.
The state has tried to distance itself from the killings, blaming rogue elements and forming a committee to investigate the violence. But witnesses said the gunmen who wrought carnage were indistinguishable from government forces. Some said that foreign fighters appeared to be among them.
The deaths underscore the deep challenges faced by Syria since Assad’s fall. The former president clung to power despite mass protests and an armed insurgency, leading to 14 years of civil war. That period left society with deep sectarian scars, fueled extremism and made Syria a magnate for foreign-born Islamist militants.
Sharaa, who is Syrian and once affiliated with al-Qaeda, rose the ranks of insurgents and it was his rebel group, Hayʼat Tahrir al-Sham, that led the operation to oust Assad in December. From the outset, he promised that his Islamist government would be inclusive of minorities. But the recent violence raises serious questions about whether he is willing or able to rein in the vast array of armed factions still operating across the country.
“No one will be above the law, and all those whose hands are stained with Syrian blood will face justice — fairly and without delay,” Sharaa said Sunday.
The pace of the violence appeared to have slowed but many were too terrified to return to their villages. One resident of al-Sanobar, a village in Latakia, said that militants arrived Friday morning, made their way to the mayor’s house and shot him and his three sons as their mother watched.
“Imagine your husband and three boys being killed in front of you,” said the resident, who was not there at the time but relayed accounts from his neighbors. He, like others in this report, declined to be named for fear of reprisals.
The wife and 4-year-old daughter of one of the mayor’s sons was also there. “One of the militants told her to take her gold off and said that otherwise they’d kill her daughter,” the resident said.
He broke down as he recounted the names of 10 more people killed in three other houses belonging to the same extended family. At least 133 people were killed in Sanobar alone, he said, providing a list of names of the dead compiled by residents.
In other villages, entire families were killed.
“The killing of civilians in coastal areas in northwest Syria must cease, immediately,” the U.N. commissioner for human rights Volker Türk, said Sunday. He said that his office had received “extremely disturbing reports” of the killing of entire families, including women and children as well as surrendered fighters.
In an earlier address on Sunday, Sharaa described the violence as within the “expected challenges” for Syria in the postwar period. But after the massacres, some Alawites said it is hard for them to see a future in the country.
“As an Alawite, I don’t see I have a future here in Syria,” said one 36-year-old from the coastal town of Jableh, who hid in an abandoned building to escape the killings.
Another resident of the town said his wife and son fled their home Friday after their downstairs neighbor was killed — and that they had called him to tell him not to go home.
“I am still alive, but I don’t know if that will be the case one hour from now or one day from now,” he said.
Morris reported from Berlin, Cheeseman and El Chamaa from Beirut. Mustafa Salim in Baghdad and Souad Mekhennet in Washington contributed to this report.
Middle East conflict
Humanitarian groups and some Arab nations, including mediators Qatar and Egypt, condemned Israel’s decision Sunday to halt the entry of all aid into war-battered Gaza. Follow live updates on the ceasefire and the hostages remaining in Gaza.
The Israel-Gaza war: On Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas militants launched an unprecedented cross-border attack on Israel, killing about 1,200 people and taking civilian hostages. Israel declared war on Hamas in response, launching a ground invasion that fueled the biggest displacement in the region since Israel’s creation in 1948. In July 2024, Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh was killed in an attack Hamas has blamed on Israel.
Hezbollah: In late 2024, Israel and Lebanon’s Hezbollah agreed to a ceasefire deal, bringing a tenuous halt to more than a year of hostilities that included an Israeli invasion of southern Lebanon. Israel’s airstrikes into Lebanon had been intense and deadly, killing over 1,400 people including Hasan Nasrallah, Hezbollah’s longtime leader. The Israel-Lebanon border has a history of violence that dates back to Israel’s founding.
Gaza crisis: In the Gaza Strip, Israel has waged one of this century’s most destructive wars, killing tens of thousands and plunging at least half of the population into “famine-like conditions.” For months, Israel has resisted pressure from Western allies to allow more humanitarian aid into the enclave.
U.S. involvement: Despite tensions between Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and some U.S. politicians, including former President Joe Biden, the United States supports Israel with weapons, funds aid packages, and has vetoed or abstained from the United Nations’ ceasefire resolutions.
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