Above photo: Nazeer al-khatib/AFP/Getty Images.
Hundreds have been reported missing in Syria’s coast.
As forces from the de facto government continue to terrorize Alawite-majority villages.
At least six people were killed and several others from the Alawite community were wounded on 31 March in a new civilian massacre in Harf B-Nimra village, located in Syria’s Tartous governorate.
According to local reports, armed men wearing military uniforms entered the village in Baniyas countryside and executed the Mukhtar (the village elder), his son, and five other men.
“The gunmen set off from Al-Desaynah base, a former camp of the [disbanded Syrian Arab Army], in Baniyas countryside. The attackers carried out that attack and returned to the base where forces of the ministries of defense and interior are stationed,” the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) reported on Monday.
“SOHR sources have reported that the attackers chanted sectarian slogans and released death threats before the attack, triggering public panic in the region,” the report added.
Earlier in the day, SOHR reported the discovery of 11 civilian bodies with gunshots to the head that were dumped in the Jobar River near the Baniyas refinery in the Tartous countryside.
According to local reports, hundreds of residents from the Al-Qosour neighborhood in Baniyas remain unaccounted for, with their fate unknown.
The grim discovery came one day after self-appointed President Ahmad al-Sharaa announced the formation of a transitional government for Syria, hailing it as “a declaration of our joint will to build a new state.”
Syria’s transitional government was officially sworn in late on Saturday, 29 March, at the People’s Palace in Damascus, with key ministers (Abu Qasra, Khattab, Shaibani) retaining their posts and former opposition figure Hind Kabawat appointed as the sole female minister. pic.twitter.com/fz9J3gAlCn
— The Cradle (@TheCradleMedia) March 30, 2025
Several top officials, including Sharaa, are former commanders of Al-Qaeda offshoot Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), which has been officially dissolved but retains the bulk of its fighting formation as part of the country’s new army and security apparatus.
These extremists have been conducting sectarian massacres in Syria’s coastal regions for the past month, killing hundreds of Alawite families.
On 25 March, at least 31 civilians were killed by Ministry of Defense and Public Security personnel in Tartous, Latakia, Homs, and Hama. Days earlier, the government troops killed at least 72 people in the same regions.
“We woke up to the sound of gunfire and screaming. We didn’t know what was happening. I saw my neighbors being killed in front of their homes with my own eyes, and I could do nothing but hide,” survivor Abu Mahmoud, from the Latakia countryside, told The Cradle.
“I could hear the cries of children, but the sound would soon fade … they were killing everyone. When the noises finally stopped, I emerged from my hiding place to find my village reduced to ashes. The living were few, and death filled the air,” he added.