Massacre of civilians in Syria leaves more than a thousand dead in just three days
Human Rights Watch (HRW) said Syria's new security forces have executed hundreds of people in cold blood. Syrian churches have denounced massacres of innocent civilians.
More than 1,000 people, including 745 civilians from the Alawite minority, have been killed in Syria's coastal provinces in three days of clashes between security forces of the new Damascus administration and groups loyal to ousted President Bashar al-Assad, an NGO reported on Saturday (08.03.2025).
"As of Saturday evening, the death toll had risen to 1,018," said the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which reported that "745 civilians were killed in cold blood in sectarian massacres" in the western provinces of Syria with an Alawite majority, the branch of Shiite Islam professed by Bashar al-Assad's family.
According to the NGO, based in the United Kingdom and with a wide network of collaborators on the ground, "the number of human victims has increased rapidly since the entry of armed groups to support the security forces and units of the Ministry of Defense" of the new authorities in Damascus.
Syrian churches have condemned the massacres of innocent civilians and called for an immediate end to these horrific acts.
The worst clashes since the fall of the Al Assad dynasty in December 2024
Clashes erupted on Thursday, March 6, 2025, after Alawite insurgents launched an attack on security forces in the town of Jableh in Latakia, triggering the biggest wave of violence in Syria since the ouster of Al Assad on December 8.
According to the breakdown of casualties, at least 125 members of the General Security, the Ministry of Defense and other allied groups have been killed in three days of clashes; while another 148 "armed individuals" loyal to the Al Assad regime have been killed in the clashes that have taken place in the provinces of Latakia, Tartus, Homs and Hama.
They ask to document the massacre of civilians
Civilian deaths and executions on the ground have occurred mainly in the coastal provinces of Latakia and Tartus, former strongholds of the Assad family and the heart of the Alawite community, to which around 10% of the Syrian population belongs.
In response to the massacre of civilians, the NGO called on the international community "to take urgent measures and send specialized international investigation teams to document the serious violations that have affected civilians." He also called on the Damascus authorities to "hold accountable" their troops involved in these actions, considering that "impunity encourages the repetition of crimes in the future, which threatens political and social stability in Syria after the fall of Al Assad."
The new Syrian administration has not explicitly acknowledged these acts, but has said it will take legal action and hold accountable anyone found to have committed "excesses" or "acts of revenge" against civilians during military operations aimed at quelling insurgency hotbeds of pro-Assad groups.