BEIRUT: Human Rights Watch on Tuesday called on the Syrian Arab Republic’s new authorities to ensure accountability for the mass killings of hundreds of civilians in recent days in the coastal heartland of the Alawite minority.
Violence broke out Thursday as security forces clashed with gunmen loyal to former president Bashar Assad, who is Alawite, in areas along the Mediterranean coast.
Since then, war monitor the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said security forces and allied groups had killed at least 1,093 civilians, the vast majority Alawites.
“Syria’s new leaders promised to break with the horrors of the past, but grave abuses on a staggering scale are being reported against predominantly Alawite Syrians in the coastal region and elsewhere in Syria,” said HRW’s deputy regional director Adam Coogle.
“Government action to protect civilians and prosecute perpetrators of indiscriminate shootings, summary executions, and other grave crimes must be swift and unequivocal,” he said in a statement decrying the “coastal killing spree.”
The New York-based rights group said it was “not able to verify the number of civilians killed or displaced, but obituaries circulating on Facebook indicate hundreds were killed, including entire families.”
The wave of violence is the worst since forces led by the Islamist group Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham (HTS) launched a lightning offensive that toppled Assad on December 8, capping a 13-year civil war.
Syria’s interim President Ahmed Al-Sharaa, who led HTS, has vowed to “hold accountable, firmly and without leniency, anyone who was involved in the bloodshed of civilians.”
The defense ministry announced on Monday the end of the “military operation” seeking to root out “regime remnants” in the coastal areas.
But according to the Britain-based Observatory, another 120 civilians have been killed since then, the majority of them in Latakia and Tartus provinces on the coast — where much of the earlier violence since last week had occurred.
Authorities have announced the arrest of at least two fighters seen in videos killing civilians, the official news agency SANA reported.
HRW said that “accountability for atrocities must include all parties,” including groups like HTS and the Turkish-backed Syrian National Army that “now constitute Syria’s new security forces.”
“These groups have a well-documented history of human rights abuses and violations of international law,” it added.
HTS, which has its roots in the Syrian branch of jihadist network Al-Qaeda, is still proscribed as a terrorist organization by several governments including the United States.
Since toppling Assad and taking power, Sharaa has vowed to protect Syria’s religious and ethnic minorities.
In its statement, HRW called on the authorities to “fully cooperate with and ensure unhindered access to independent monitors.”
Syria’s presidency had announced that an “independent committee” was formed to investigate the killings.
The panel is due to hold its first press conference later Tuesday.
HRW says Syria must protect civilians after ‘killing spree’
https://arab.news/2xtnw
HRW says Syria must protect civilians after ‘killing spree’
- “Grave abuses on a staggering scale are being reported against predominantly Alawite Syrians,” said HRW’s deputy regional director Adam Coogle
- “Government action to protect civilians and prosecute perpetrators of indiscriminate shootings, summary executions, and other grave crimes must be swift and unequivocal”
Hezbollah chief says supports state diplomacy to stop Israeli aggression
- The state has chosen “diplomacy to end the aggression and implement” a November 2024 ceasefire deal “and we support it continuing in this direction,” Qassem said
- “They want to eliminate our existence,” Qassem said, but “we will defend ourselves”
BEIRUT: Hezbollah chief Naim Qassem on Friday said his group supported the Lebanese state’s pursuit of diplomacy to end Israeli attacks, while also criticizing the inclusion of a civilian representative in recent talks with Israel.
The state has chosen “diplomacy to end the aggression and implement” a November 2024 ceasefire deal “and we support it continuing in this direction,” Qassem said in a televised address.
Lebanese and Israeli civilian representatives held their first direct talks in decades on Wednesday under the auspices of the year-old ceasefire monitoring mechanism, a move Lebanon’s president said was to avoid prospects of another war in Lebanon.
Qassem criticized the move and urged authorities to reconsider.
“We consider this measure an additional misstep on top of the sin” of the government’s decision in August to task the army with disarming Hezbollah, he said.
“Have you made a gratuitous concession? This concession will not change the enemy’s position, nor its aggression or occupation,” Qassem said, accusing Israel and the United States of wanting Lebanese authorities to be negotiating “under fire.”
“They want to eliminate our existence,” Qassem said, but “we will defend ourselves, our people, our country. We are prepared to sacrifice everything, and we will not surrender.”
He accused Israel of violating the year-old ceasefire that sought to end more than a year of hostilities between Israel and his Iran-backed group, which emerged heavily weakened with its arsenal pummelled and senior commanders killed including former chief Hassan Nasrallah.
Qassem said his group was cooperating with the Lebanese authorities, and that America and Israel should have “no say in how we manage our domestic affairs,” calling their imposition of conditions on Lebanon as “unacceptable.”
Lebanese Prime Minister Nawaf Salam has said the new talks were strictly limited to fully implementing last year’s truce and did not amount to broader peace discussions.
