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Civilians from the Alawite religious minority continue to be targeted in Syria, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) warned on April 15.
The London-based monitoring group said that since the end of Ramadan on March 30, at least 42 Alawites lost their lives due to sectarian violence blamed on the forces of the Islamist-led interim government, with incidents occurring from Latakia to Tartus and extending to Hama and Homs.
The Alawites are Syria’s largest religious minority group. The family of former Syrian president Bashar al-Assad belong to the group.
Rami Abdurrahman, the head of the SOHR, noted that while the scale of the violence has shifted to individual acts, the killings have not ceased.
“The killings did not stop, but now they are individual acts,” he said, highlighting the persisting threat to the minority community.
In addition to the killings, the SOHR reported a troubling rise in enforced disappearances and kidnappings, with at least 17 women and minors reported missing in recent weeks.
More than 1,600 civilians, mostly Alawites, were killed during a government crackdown on the coast that began on March 6. After facing international pressure, the government announced that all operations on the coast were over by March 10 and formed an investigation committee. However, war monitors and activists have repeatedly warned since then that Alawite civilians were still being targeted by government forces.
The violence has so far displaced nearly 50,000 Alawites to northern and eastern Lebanon with around 10,000 others taking shelter at Russia’s Khmeimim Air Base near the city of Jableh in the southern countryside of Latakia. The numbers of refugees continue to grow.
The Syrian government is yet to hold anyone accountable for the killings or ease security measures in Alawite-majority areas. As a result of this, the group appears to have lost all trust in the government.
Earlier this month, Sheikh Ghazal Ghazal, head of the Supreme Alawite Islamic Council in Syria and Diaspora, and several other prominent leaders of the group renewed calls for international protection.
While no foreign power has yet picked up on the Alawites’ cry for help, this could soon change as the government has so far failed to build strong relations with key international powers, like the United States, Russia and China.
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if netanyahu wasn’t a fool who couldn’t even protect a hippie party from hamas, he will did know the israelites would be next. if israel had a smart president, he would help either the alawites or awda to overthrow jolani before israel goes the way of libya. israel has never been more threatened than it is right now, but netanyahu, in his corrupt arrogance, is completely unaware of the danger, just as he was unaware of and ignored the danger when he was warned that hamas would attack.
or netanyahu should do his best to find a suitable druze in the idf to install as president of syria. without this, israel will definitely be devastated by erdogan’s army (jolani is erdogan’s beglerbeg) one day.
why israel.why don’t you do it . listen little girl listen carefully no one but no one can touch syria syrian people can make their own choice. we are watching closely erdogan will not allow any country to divide syria they are welcome to try….
the idf should attend a private isis party uninvited and ruin it so badly that it would forever link the alawites to israel.in march, katz had such a great opportunity to side with the alawites and protect the buffer zone and he would help the alawites so that the butter zone would become, as you mia said yesterday, a subsidiary state.
mileikowsky aka netanyahu cares for no one but his kult
if katz and netanyahu were smart, they would have hit isis toyotas with drones in march. the idf should attend a private isis party uninvited and ruin it so badly that it would forever link the alawites to israel.
if netanyahu were smart, he would help the alawites in march and thereby forever link them to israel. katz would make a country and call it the buffer zone.
murdering christians is no different than killing palestinians to the indoctrinated chosen-ite . so the israeli / mossad controlled al queda killings are welcomed .