"On Friday morning, at 8 am, military factions entered Baniyas with militias from the region, particularly from Bayda [a village 12 kilometers to the south], where a massacre had been committed during the time of the al-Assad regime. There were foreigners with them, Turkmen and Chechens. They started killing people. They were everywhere," said a resident of an Alawite neighborhood in this multi-faith town on the Syrian coast. This witness, like all those contacted via telephone by Le Monde, requested anonymity for their own safety.

Since Friday, March 7, Syrians of the Alawite faith, a dissident branch of Shiism, have been subjected to violence on a scale unprecedented since the fall of President Bashar al-Assad on December 8, 2024. Having been part of the power base of the Assad clan, some willingly, most forcibly, they are considered to be complicit in the crimes perpetrated against the population during the 54 years of the clan's reign, including 13 years of civil war.

In Alawite strongholds in the west and center of the country, civilians were targeted on the sidelines of deadly fighting that pitted security forces, drawn from the coalition of Islamist groups led by the ruling Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS, Levant Liberation Organization) against members of militias loyal to the al-Assad clan. According to a provisional toll compiled Saturday evening by the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR), 745 Alawite civilians were killed in the coastal regions and mountains of Latakia. Fighting between security forces and pro-Assad militiamen left 273 dead.

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