Around midnight on March 6, as sectarian killings erupted in western Syria, masked men raided Alawite homes in Damascus, detaining over two dozen unarmed men, witnesses said.
Those taken from the neighbourhood of al-Qadam included a retired teacher, an engineering student and a mechanic, all of them Alawite – the minority sect of toppled leader Bashar al-Assad.
A group of Alawites loyal to Syria’s ousted president Assad had launched a fledgling insurgency hours earlier in coastal areas, some 200 miles (320 km) to the northwest, and that unleashed a spree of revenge killings there that left hundreds of Alawites dead.
Sharaa Deployes Forces
Syria’s interim president Ahmed al-Sharaa told Reuters he dispatched his forces the next day to halt the violence on the coast but that some fighters who flooded the region to crush the uprising did so without defence ministry authorisation.
Amid fears of wider sectarian conflict across Syria, Sharaa’s government took pains to emphasize in the wake of the violence that the killings were geographically limited. It named a fact-finding committee to investigate “the events on the coast”.
The accounts by the dozen witnesses in Damascus, however, indicate that sectarian violence unfolded in the southern edges of Syria’s capital, a few kilometres from the presidential palace. The details of the alleged raids, kidnappings and killings have not been previously reported.
“Any Alawite home, they knocked the door down and took the men from inside,” said one resident, whose relative, 48-year-old telecoms engineer Ihsan Zeidan, was taken by masked men in the early hours of March 7.
“They took him purely because he’s Alawite.”
All the witnesses who spoke to Reuters requested anonymity out of fear of reprisals.
The neighbourhood of al-Qadam is well-known to be home to many Alawite families.
In total, the witnesses said, at least 25 men were taken. At least eight of them were later confirmed dead, according to relatives and neighbours, who said they either saw photographs of the bodies or found them dead nearby.
The rest of the men have not been heard from.
Four of the witnesses said some of the armed men who came to al-Qadam identified themselves as members of the General Security Service (GSS), a new Syrian agency comprising former rebels.
Alawites Not Targeted ‘Directly’
A spokesperson for the interior ministry, under which the GSS operates, told Reuters the force “did not target Alawites directly. The security forces are confiscating weapons from all sects.”
The spokesperson did not respond to further questions, including why unarmed men were allegedly taken in these operations.
Yasser Farhan, spokesman for the committee investigating the sectarian violence, said its work has been geographically limited to the coast, so it had not investigated cases in al-Qadam. “But there may be deliberations within the committee at a later time to expand our work,” he told Reuters.
Alawites comprise around 10% of Syria’s population, concentrated in the coastal heartlands of Latakia and Tartus. Thousands of Alawite families have also lived in Damascus for decades, and in provincial cities such as Homs and Hama.
(With inputs from Reuters)
