Above photo: Reuters.
Some 400 kidnappings and killings have been reported since the government of Bashar al-Assad was toppled in early December.
Nine civilians were kidnapped and executed by unknown gunmen in the Syrian cities of Homs and Jableh, as revenge killings continue in the wake of President Bashar al-Assad’s ousting earlier this month, Sputnik News reported on 31 December.
Local sources speaking with Sputnik stated that “six civilians were kidnapped in the Abbasiya neighborhood in the city of Homs on 29 December by unknown gunmen. Their bodies were found after they were executed by firing squad on the outskirts of the city of Homs. Five of them were from the same family.”
The sources reported further that the bodies of three people who were executed by firing squad were found in the coastal city of Jableh. The victims included a man in his seventies and his son in his thirties. An armed group abducted them and took them to an unknown location two weeks ago.
The sources added that four young men in the city of Homs were kidnapped by masked gunmen riding two four-wheel drive vehicles on Monday. Their fate is unknown.
In the countryside of Latakia, the western countryside of Hama, and Aleppo, a further 15 people have been kidnapped in the past 48 hours, Sputnik added.
Violence has also been reported in the Damascus countryside.
Security forces of the new Syrian government led by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) carried out a raid in a town in the Damascus countryside, killed its mayor, and arrested 30 people, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) reported on Tuesday.
“Yesterday, the town of Ras al-Ma’arra in the western Qalamoun region in the Damascus countryside witnessed a raid carried out by armed groups affiliated with the General Security in the Military Operations Department amid heavy gunfire,” SOHR stated.
Medical sources speaking with Sputnik say that some 400 kidnappings and killings have been reported across Syria since militants from HTS toppled the Syrian government led by Bashar al-Assad on 8 December.
Many victims are members of Bashar al-Assad’s Alawite sect.
The HTS leader, Ahmed al-Sharaa, became Syria’s de facto leader and has formed a caretaker government. Sharaa was formerly a deputy of ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi in Iraq. He traveled to Syria in 2011 on Baghdadi’s orders to found the Nusra Front, which later became HTS.
The HTS-led Syrian government has required all members of the previous government’s army and security forces to turn in their weapons and undergo a reconciliation process to ensure they have not committed any acts HTS considers as crimes.