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HTS-led Syrian security forces step up sectarian killings: Report

The Cradle | January 12, 2025

Militants affiliated with the new Syrian government, led by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) leader Ahmed al-Sharaa, are kidnapping and murdering members of Syria’s Alawite community based on their religious identity in various parts of Syria.

Immediately after ousting the government of Bashar al-Assad and taking power in Damascus on 8 December, militants from HTS began targeting members of the Alawite community based on accusations of crimes they committed as part of the previous government.

However, Al-Akhbar reported on 11 December that in the Hama governorate, especially in the villages of its northern and eastern countryside, HTS and affiliated militants are carrying out “liquidation operations based on identity, without making accusations against them, such as that they are ‘regime remnants’ or were ‘against the revolution’ before ordering the killing.”

The Lebanese paper reports that militants affiliated with the new government are “terrorizing the residents of the Alawite sect and pressuring them to evacuate their homes, especially in some eastern villages affiliated with Salamiyah,” which will lead to demographic changes in the region.

In the villages of Al-Zaghba, Mabatan, Maryoud, Al-Fanat, and Maan in the eastern countryside, armed factions are stealing, looting, and burning homes to ensure that residents do not return.

A resident of Al-Zaghba village told Al-Akhbar that “the militants present in the village prevent the return of the homeowners, and if the purpose of returning is to check on the house or bring some items and necessities from it, then the residents enter at their own risk.”

One of the residents displaced to the villages of the Syrian coast told Al-Akhbar that “he no longer thinks of returning to his village due to the violations committed by militants whose affiliation no one knows.”

He added that “the militants killed a civilian man from the village who returned to check on his house during the past two days.”

When he contacted authorities from the new government to “find out the affiliation of these killers, who responded that the area was outside the control of its factions and that it had nothing to do with the violations taking place there.”

Reports of sectarian killings by HTS or affiliated militants in Homs, Latakia, and Tartous continue to emerge on social media.

On 8 January, an Alawite man, Sheikh Ali Deeb, and his wife were killed in rural Salamiyah in the village of Dniba during an HTS search operation. Their bodies were found on a side road connecting the village of Dniba to the neighboring village of Snida.

On 9 January, Aziz Mamdouh Ahmed was found murdered after being kidnapped in the Dablan area in the city of Homs by HTS militants.

Ahmed was a fifth-year student in the Faculty of Pharmacy at the University of Homs and is the only child of his parents. He comes from the Alawite-majority village of Al-Qabou.

In another incident this week, extremist militants shot and killed the popular Syrian-Palestinan actor Abdulmounem Amayri, accusing him of blasphemy. According to his daughter, the militants stopped him while he was driving, dragged him out, beat him till he was unconscious, and then stepped on his body.

On 8 January, in the small Alawite village of Ayn al-Sharqiyah on the Syrian coast, three members of the Izzeddine family were murdered while picking olives. Large numbers attended the funeral of Ammar, his son Musa, and his nephew Mohammad.

The HTS-led government sometimes acknowledges that such violations are taking place, but describes them as ‘isolated’ incidents or revenge incidents. At other times, it refuses to comment on them, saying that the armed groups committing these killings have no affiliation with the government.

The new Syrian government has also detained large numbers of soldiers who fought in the Syrian Arab Army (SAA) before its fall in December. The HTS authorities are requiring all soldiers to turn in their weapons and undergo an investigation for their actions during the war. In exchange, they receive a paper showing their reconciled status.

However, reports have emerged of Alawite soldiers being singled out for their religious faith and imprisoned.

On 6 January, relatives of imprisoned soldiers held a protest in Umayyad Square in Damascus, calling for the release of up to 10,000 former Syrian army soldiers and officers currently held in HTS prisons in Adra, Hama, and Idlib. Demonstrators demanded their sons be released, saying many were detained after handing in their weapons and receiving reconciled status.

January 12, 2025 - Posted by aletho | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, War Crimes | Human rights, Syria