Syrian government forces kill 72 Alawites in new wave of sectarian massacres

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) reported on 21 March that it had documented the killing of 72 people across Syria over the past 24 hours in a series of bloody assassinations targeting both civilians and military personnel.

The SOHR said that 58 were killed in the countryside regions of Tartous and Latakia, noting that the assassinations were carried out by “armed groups affiliated with the General Security and Syrian military factions.”

The rights monitor added that the remaining assassinations took place in the governorates of Aleppo, Daraa, Deir Ezzor, Damascus, and Homs without providing further information about who was responsible.

The SOHR previously revealed that it had obtained four videotapes documenting the summary execution of young, unarmed Alawite men by Syrian security forces in the village of Al-Shir in the Latakia countryside on 7 March.

The Observatory previously reported that more than 1,500 Alawite civilians were killed in the massacres on the Syrian coast over the course of several days starting on 7 March.

Sunni gunmen affiliated with Syria’s security forces went door to door in towns and villages, killing Alawite men and, at times, even women and children while looting and burning homes.

Syria’s security forces are dominated by members of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), the former al-Qaeda affiliate in Syria, as well as the Turkish-backed mercenaries from the Syrian National Army (SNA).

The Salafi ideology of HTS and the SNA views Alawites, the religious minority group from which former president Bashar al-Assad stems, as apostates who deserved to be killed for their religion.