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The death toll from the Syrian government crackdown on the coastal region has exceeded 1,311 with civilians from the Alawite minority making up the vast majority of the casualties, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) said late on March 9.
Three days earlier, rebellion broke out on the Syrian coast following a series of violations by government forces and affiliated militias against the Alawites, an offshoot of Islam Shiite. The family of former Syrian president Bashar al-Assad belongs to the sect.
After initial success in Latakia, Qardaha, Jableh, Banias and Tartus, Alawite rebels were overpowered by government forces which brought in large reinforcements on March 7. Since then, a series of massacres against Alawite civilians have been taking place.
Syria’s Islamist government said that it was holding its personnel accountable for any violation during operations against the rebels, who are mainly made from former officers and soldiers of the now dissolved Syrian Arab Army.
In addition, the government announced on March 9 that it had formed a judicial committee to investigate what it described as “recent events” on the Syrian coast. Nevertheless, the numbers provided by SOHR shows that the mass killing of Alawite civilians is still ongoing.
The London-based monitoring group reported 160 civilian victims on March 7, 366 on March 8 and at least 301 on March 9.
In total, the group has documented the death of 830 Alawite civilians so far, in addition to 231 security personnel and 250 rebels.
Most government attacks on March 9 targeted Alawite areas within the city of Banias and in several nearby towns, including Tanita. Attacks on civilians were also reported in the towns of Tala, Beit Al-Shakouhi, Brabshbo, Datour and Al-Bahlouliya in the countryside of Latakia. The attacks included mass executions and artillery shelling, according to footage posted to social networks.
The massacres have so far displaced some 10,000 Alawites to the governorate of Baalbek-Hermel in eastern Lebanon, according to Lebanese media.
More that 7,000 others continue to take shelter at Russia’s Khmeimim Air Base near the city of Jableh, where they are being provided with humanitarian aid.
Meanwhile, the Syrian government brutal crackdown on the coast continues to draw more condemnations from around the world.
In a press statement released on March 9, United States Secretary of State Marco Rubio said that radical Islamist terrorists, including foreign jihadis, had been murdering people in western Syria.
“The United States stands with Syria’s religious and ethnic minorities, including its Christian, Druze, Alawite, and Kurdish communities, and offers its condolences to the victims and their families,” Rubio said in the statement. “Syria’s interim authorities must hold the perpetrators of these massacres against Syria’s minority communities accountable.”
Israel also doubled down on its stance against the country’s Islamist rulers with Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar saying that European countries must “wake up” and drastically change their approach to the new Syrian government.
“Over the weekend, the masks came off when [Syria’s interim President Ahmed al-Sharaa’s] men mercilessly massacred their own people — the citizens of the so-called ‘New Syria,’” Sa’ar told German media outlet Bild.
“Europe must raise its voice: against the massacre, against the barbaric murder of civilians, against this distilled evil of the jihadists,” says Sa’ar. “It must wake up. It must stop granting legitimacy to a regime whose first actions — unsurprising, given its well-known terrorist background — are these atrocities.”
“The international community in general, and Europe in particular, has flocked to Damascus in recent months to shake hands” with Sharaa, Sa’ar complained.
The minister went on to say that the new rulers in Syria “were jihadists and have remained so, even if they now wear suits.”
All in all, the situation on the Syria coast appears to be worsening on all levels. The massacres against the Alawites will weaken the unity of the country for decades to come. Still, the Syrian government appears to be determined to go on with the crackdown.
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