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11-03-2025
DAMASCUS: Syria’s interim leader has appealed for unity, as violence and revenge killings continued in areas loyal to ousted former leader Bashar al-Assad on Sunday.
Hundreds of people have reportedly fled their homes in the coastal provinces of Latakia and Tartus strongholds of Assad support.
Local residents have described scenes of looting and mass killings, including of children.
In Hai Al Kusour, a predominantly Alawite neighborhood in the coastal city of Banias, residents say the streets are filled with scattered bodies, piled up and covered in blood. Men of different ages were shot dead there, witnesses said.
The Alawite sect is an offshoot of Shia Islam and makes up around 10% of Syria’s population, which is majority Sunni Muslim. Assad belongs to the sect.
People were too scared to even look out of their windows on Friday. The internet connection is unstable, but when connected they learned of their neighbors’ deaths from Facebook posts.
One man, Ayman Fares, told the BBC he was saved by his recent imprisonment. He had posted a video on his Facebook account in August 2023 criticizing Assad for his corrupt rule. He was arrested soon after, and only released when Islamist-led forces freed prisoners after Assad’s fall last December.
The fighters who raided the streets of Hai Al Kusour recognized him, so he was spared death but not the looting. They took his cars and continued to raid other houses.
“They were strangers, I can’t identify their identity or language, but they seemed to be Uzbek or Chechen,” Fares told me by phone.
“There were also some Syrians with them but not from the official security. Some civilians also were among those who carried out the killing,” he added.
Fares said he saw families killed in their own homes, and women and children covered in blood. Some families ran to their rooftops to hide but were not spared the bloodshed. “It is horrific,” he said.
The UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights documented more than 740 civilians killed in the coastal cities of Latakia, Jableh and Banias. A further 300 members of the security forces and remnants of the Assad regime are reported to have died in clashes.
The BBC has not been able to independently verify the death toll.
Fares said things stabilized when the Syrian army and security forces arrived in the city of Banias. They pushed other factions out of the city and provided corridors for families to access safe areas, he said.
Ali, another resident of Banias who asked us not to use his full name, corroborated Fares’ account. Ali, who lived in Kusour with his wife and 14-year-old daughter, fled his home with the assistance of security forces.
“They came to our building. We were too scared just listening to the fire and screams of people in the neighborhood. We learned about the deaths from sporadic Facebook posts when we managed to connect but when they came to our building, we thought we are done,” he said.
“They were after money. They knocked on our neighbor’s door taking his car, his money and all the gold or valuables he had in his home but he was not killed.”
Ali and his family were picked up by his Sunni neighbors, who follow a different branch of Islam, and are now staying with them. “We lived together for years, Alawites, Sunnis and Christians. We never experienced this,” he told me.
“The Sunnis rushed to protect Alawites from the killing that happened and now the official forces are in town to restore order.” (BBC)
