Over 1,000 Syrians have lost their lives within a mere two days due to brutal revenge killings in the conflict-torn nation, where violent clashes are ongoing between the new rulers and supporters of deposed President Bashar Assad.
According to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, based in Britain, the casualties include 745 civilians, predominantly victims of massacres, along with 125 members of government security forces and 148 fighters affiliated with pro-Assad armed groups.
It added that electricity and drinking water were cut off in large areas around the city of Latakia.
These recent violent confrontations, which commenced on Thursday, represent some of the deadliest incidents in Syria’s 14-year-long conflict and signify a significant escalation in the confrontation faced by the new government in Damascus, following the removal of Assad from power by insurgents three months ago.
Witnesses revealed how women were reportedly told to ‘walk naked’ before being shot dead amid horrifying scenes in Syria.
The government has said that they were responding to attacks from remnants of Assad’s forces and blamed ‘individual actions’ for the rampant violence.
The revenge killings that were started by Sunni Muslim gunmen loyal to the government against members of Assad’s minority Alawite sect are a major blow to Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, the faction that led the overthrow of the former government.
Alawites made up a large part of Assad’s support base for decades.
Residents of Baniyas, one of the towns worst hit by the violence, said bodies were strewn on the streets or left unburied in homes and on the roofs of buildings, and nobody was able to collect them.
One witness said that the gunmen prevented residents for hours from removing the bodies of five of their neighbors killed Friday at close range.
‘They forcibly brought people down to the streets, then they lined them up and started shooting them,’ a resident of Baniyasin told Sky News.
‘They left nobody. They left nobody at all. The scene that I saw was pure horror; it’s just indescribable,’ he said.
The man also described how women were forced to ‘walk naked’ before being gunned down.
Ali Sheha, a 57-year-old resident of Baniyas who fled with his family and neighbors hours after the violence broke out Friday, said that at least 20 of his neighbors and colleagues in one neighborhood of Baniyas where Alawites lived, were killed, some of them in their shops, or in their homes.
Sheha called the attacks ‘revenge killings’ of the Alawite minority for the crimes committed by Assad’s government.
Other residents said the gunmen included foreign fighters, and militants from neighboring villages and towns.
‘It was very very bad. Bodies were on the streets,’ as he was fleeing, Sheha said, speaking by phone from nearly 20 kilometers (12 miles) away from the city.
He said the gunmen were gathering less than 100 meters from his apartment building, firing randomly at homes and residents and in at least one incident he knows of, asked residents for their IDs to check their religion and their sect before killing them.
The Observatory’s chief Rami Abdurrahman said revenge killings stopped early on Saturday.
‘This was one of the biggest massacres during the Syrian conflict,’ he said about the killings of Alawite civilians.
The previous figure given by the group was more than 200 dead. No official figures have been released.
Horrific footage shows the violent clashes, with one video showing street fighters exchanging gunfire.
The leaders of Syria’s three main Christian churches issued a joint statement Saturday condemning ‘massacres targeting innocent civilians’, following reports of mass killings of Alawite civilians by the security forces.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights also said ‘532 Alawite civilians were killed in the coastal regions of Syria and the Latakia mountains by security forces and allied groups’.
‘In recent days, Syria has witnessed a dangerous escalation of violence, brutality, and killings, resulting in attacks on innocent civilians, including women and children,’ the joint statement said.
It was signed by the patriarchs of the Greek Orthodox, Syriac Orthodox and Melkite Greek Catholic Churches.
The reported killings on the Mediterranean coast – the heartland of the Alawite religious minority – was gripped by fighting between the country’s new security forces and gunmen loyal to toppled president Bashar al-Assad.
Though the majority of Syria’s Christians fled during the civil war that erupted in 2011, the city of Latakia, which has been hard hit by the latest violence, is home to a small Christian community.
‘The Christian churches, while strongly condemning any act that threatens civil peace, denounce and condemn the massacres targeting innocent civilians, and call for an immediate end to these horrific acts, which stand in stark opposition to all human and moral values,’ the statement said.
‘The churches also call for the swift creation of conditions conducive to achieving national reconciliation among the Syrian people.’
They urged a ‘transition to a state that… lays the foundation for a society based on equal citizenship and genuine partnership, free from the logic of vengeance and exclusion’.
The spiritual leader of Syria’s Druze minority, Sheikh Hikmat al-Hajri, also called for an end to the violence.
‘The flames that burn under sectarian slogans will burn all of Syria and its people,’ he said in a statement.
Assad, himself an Alawite who sought to present himself as a protector of Syria’s minorities, was ousted on December 8 in a lightning offensive led by the Islamist group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham.
The group’s leader Ahmed al-Sharaa has since been appointed Syria’s interim president.
The new authorities have repeatedly promised an inclusive transition that protects the rights of religious minorities.
The Alawite heartland has nonetheless been gripped by fear of reprisals for the Assad family’s brutal rule.
On Saturday morning, the bodies of 31 people killed in revenge attacks the day before in the central village of Tuwaym were laid to rest in a mass grave, residents said. They included nine children and four women, the residents said.
Lebanese legislator Haidar Nasser, who holds one of the two seats allocated to the Alawite sect in parliament, said people were fleeing to Lebanon. He did not have exact numbers.
Mr Nasser said many people were sheltering at the Russian air base in Hmeimim, adding that the international community should protect Alawites who are Syrian citizens loyal to their country. He said that since Assad’s fall, many Alawites had been fired from their jobs and some former soldiers who reconciled with the new authorities were killed.
Under Assad, Alawites held top posts in the army and security agencies. The new government has blamed his loyalists for attacks against the country’s new security forces over recent weeks.
The most recent clashes started when government forces tried to detain a wanted person near the coastal city of Jableh, and were ambushed by Assad loyalists, according to the Observatory.
