More than 1,000 people, including 745 civilians, were killed in the two days of clashes between Syrian security forces and fighters loyal to the former Assad regime and ensuing revenge killings, a war monitor has said, one of the highest death tolls in Syria since 2011.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a UK-based monitor, said 745 civilians were killed mostly execution-style, while 125 Syrian security forces and 148 Assad loyalists were killed. Death tolls from the two days of fighting have varied wildly, with some estimates putting the final death toll even higher.
Fighting began on Thursday after fighters loyal to the ousted Assad regime ambushed security forces in Jableh, in the coastal Latakia province.
The wide-ranging, coordinated assault was the biggest challenge to the country’s Islamist authorities so far, and came three months after opposition fighters led by Islamist rebel group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham toppled the Syrian president Bashar al-Assad.
To crush the rebellion, the Syrian government called for re-enforcements, with thousands of fighters converging on Syria’s coast from all over the country. Though fighters are nominally under the auspices of the new Syrian government, militias still persist, some of which have been implicated in past human rights abuses and are relatively undisciplined.
The Syrian government has insisted that “individual actions” led to the killing of civilians and said the massive influx of fighters on the coast led to human rights violations.
On Sunday, Syria’s transitional president, Ahmad al-Sharaa, said the developments were within “expected challenges” and called for national unity.
“We have to preserve national unity and domestic peace, we can live together,” he said in a video circulated by Arab media, speaking at a mosque in his childhood neighbourhood of Mazzah in Damascus.
“Rest assured about Syria, this country has the characteristics for survival … What is currently happening in Syria is within the expected challenges.”
In a speech on Friday, Sharaa had said that “anyone who harms civilians will face severe punishment”.
Videos showed the bodies of dozens of people in civilian clothes piled up in the town of al-Mukhtariya, where more than 40 people were killed at one time, according to the Syrian Network for Human Rights. Other videos showed fighters wearing security uniforms executing people point blank, ordering men to bark like dogs and beating captives. The Guardian was not able to independently verify these videos.
The Syrian coast is heavily populated by the minority Islamic Alawite sect, from which the deposed Syrian president hailed, though most Alawites were not associated with the Assad regime.
Syria’s new authorities promised Alawites that they would be safe under their rule and that there would be no revenge killings. Government security forces’ killings of hundreds of mainly Alawite civilians this week, however, have sent waves of fear through the religious minority community.
A man from the town of Snobar, Latakia, detailed how gunmen killed at least 14 of his neighbours who were all from the Arris family, including the execution of a 75-year-old father and his three sons in front of the family’s mother.
“After they killed the father and his boys, they asked the mother to take her gold off, or they would kill her,” said the man who was close to the family but spoke under the condition of anonymity for his safety.
Another resident of Latakia said that power and water to the area had been cut off for the past day, and that they had been sheltering in their house, scared of the militants on the streets.
“There’s no water and no power for more than 24 hours, the factions are killing anyone who appears in front of them, the corpses are piled up in the streets. This is collective punishment,” the Latakia resident said.
The UN envoy for Syria, Gier Pedersen, on Friday urged civilians to be protected, while France condemned what it said was violence targeting “civilians because of their faith”. The French foreign ministry also urged Syria’s authorities to make sure that “independent investigations can shed light on these crimes and that the perpetrators are sentenced”.
Rights groups said that a real commitment to transitional justice and an inclusive government was key to preventing Syria from spiralling into a cycle of violence. Syria’s transitional authorities are set to announce a new government this month, which will be scrutinised closely for being representative of Syria’s religious and ethnic diversity after this week’s violence.
