Syria Military Operation Over, But Killing of Alawite Civilians Continues

Syria’s Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) declared their military operation against the Alawites over on Monday morning, but the execution of Alawite civilians has not halted. The number of civilians executed before Monday has also been rising further as more are counted.

At least 17 Alawite civilians have been killed along the northwestern coast since Monday, with the largest confirmed incident reported Monday night in Jableh. A witness says militia members aligned with the government entered the Alawite neighborhood, took 10 men from their homes, and shot them in the streets.

The witness said some of the militia members appeared to be Chechen, which is in keeping with reports that HTS has absorbed a lot of foreign Sunni Islamists into the security forces and their associated militias. They have been reported by locals as heavily involved in the massacres of Alawites from the beginning. At least five more civilians, possibly as many as 21, were executed in a village just south of Baniyas, and their bodies left on the highway outside of town.