A Syrian man barely escaped a wave of sectarian killings. His brothers did not

BEIRUT (AP) — The Haydar family huddled in their apartment while gunmen stalked their hometown of Baniyas, hunting for members of Syria’s minority Alawite sect like them. After 24 terrifying hours, a friend helped Samir Haydar, his wife and two sons escape — just in time.

Minutes later, the gunmen, who were Sunni Muslim, broke into his building and killed the Alawites still there, Haydar said. Down the street, gunmen took Haydar’s two older brothers and a nephew out of their homes and killed them, too.

“If I had stayed five minutes longer, I with my entire family would have been killed,” Haydar, 67, said.

This past weekend’s sectarian violence was possibly among the bloodiest 72 hours in the modern history of a country torn by 14 years of civil war — and it threatens to open an endless cycle of vengeance. From early Friday to Sunday night, attackers rampaged through coastal provinces heavily populated by Alawites, as well as the nearby provinces of Hama and Homs, killing people, sometimes entire families, on streets, in homes, on rooftops.

Of the nearly 1,000 civilians killed, nearly 200 were in Baniyas, according to the U.K.-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a war monitor. The toll could not be independently confirmed.

Among the attackers, witnesses say, were hardline Sunni Islamists, including Syria-based jihadi foreign fighters, who came from nearby provinces. Some had been allied to Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, the disbanded insurgent group that in December led the overthrow of longtime autocrat Bashar Assad and whose members dominate the interim government now running the country.

But many were local Sunnis, unleashing hatreds pent-up over past atrocities blamed on Alawites loyal to Assad.

Survivors say some of the attackers in Baniyas were Syrians from surrounding villages seeking vengeance over a 2013 massacre in the nearby town of Beyda, where paramilitaries killed several hundred Sunnis. It was one of several mass killings under then-President Assad, whose attempts to crush protests helped foment an armed insurgency.

Assad, who is Alawite, filled his security agencies and paramilitaries with members of the sect. Some Sunnis blame the entire community for Assad’s brutal crackdowns, though Alawites say they also suffered under his rule.

“We have a lot of injustices. Many were waiting for the chance to let it out,” Haydar said from his hiding place after fleeing home. “Instead of the pain teaching them mercy and making them against killings, they translated it into more killings.”

Government reinforcements — which residents said did not intervene during the height of the killings — were eventually sent to restore order, and calm appeared to hold by late Monday. The government declared an independent committee appointed by the president will investigate the attacks. But the bloodshed has deeply tainted attempts by interim President Ahmed al-Sharaa to convince Syria’s minorities that he wants to include them as equals.

Blood and plunder

The bloodshed began after reports Thursday night of seemingly coordinated attacks by Assad loyalists on government security forces near the city of Latakia and elsewhere along the coast.

The Associated Press spoke to nine residents from villages and towns hit by the violence. Some refused to give their names out of fear for their security.

Haydar said that around daybreak Friday, hordes of armed Sunnis descended on Baniyas and surrounding villages in vans and pickup trucks, and waving guns. Another resident said she heard the gunmen shouting, “God is great,” and threatening and cursing the Alawite residents.

Images and videos soon surfaced online, mostly posted by the perpetrators. Some show fighters in military fatigues pushing residents out of homes into the streets, beating some with rifles and forcing them to bark like dogs, in humiliation. Some show fighters firing on civilians. The hundreds of videos posted could not be immediately verified.

Looting and theft were rampant. Haydar said armed men went into the building of one of his elder brothers, 74-year-old Rafik, stole his valuables and left.

Hiding in his home, Haydar said he saw fighters shoot a neighbor at the entrance of a nearby building. One fighter turned the body over to ensure he was dead.

Shot on the roof

Around noon Friday, Haydar got a call from the wife of his other brother, Iskander. She screamed that fighters had stormed their building and taken away Iskander and their son, Mourad.

Later, Mourad told his mother what happened. The fighters dragged them to the roof and made him, his father and five other men lie down. Then they sprayed them with bullets. Miraculously, Mourad was uninjured. His father and the rest of the men were killed.

Ali Sheha, a 57-year-old resident of the same neighborhood, said five of his neighbors were shot in the street, including two doctors and their two children. The gunmen prevented anyone from coming to remove their bodies for hours. Acting fast, Sheha secured a van. He, his wife, three children and other families squeezed in and fled.

That night, the village where they took refuge also came under attack. Sheha said he and hundreds of others fled again, sleeping for two nights outside among olive and pine trees.

By Saturday afternoon, Sheha said he knew of at least 20 people killed, including three cousins and two of their children with special needs, gunned down in their food stall.

When fighters entered his nephew’s house, they asked if his wife was Sunni, because she wore a headscarf. They checked her ID and let her go. His sister, living in a building with many Christians, said the gunmen spared them and her husband, in his 80s.

Haydar and his family escaped with help from a Sunni friend who negotiated for hours with the gunmen, explaining that Haydar had once been imprisoned by Assad’s security forces.

The friend, declining to give his name for fear of retribution, said that at one point, the gunmen shoved and hit him, criticizing him for harboring Alawites.

During the weekend’s violence, the friend sheltered 15 Alawites in his home, he said by phone from Baniyas.

In Tuwaym, an Alawite village in the Sunni-majority Hama province in central Syria, a resident said gunmen summoned the men, beat them with rifles and shot some. By the time they left, they had killed 25 members of her family, including her father and nine children between the ages of four and 15.

“I carried the children with my own hands. Some had their bones coming out of the gaping wounds,” she said, speaking on condition of anonymity out of fear for her safety.

Aftermath

In Baniyas and elsewhere, bodies were left lying in streets, cars and apartment buildings, civil rescue teams said. Sheha and other residents began documenting those killed. Lists of names and recorded testimonies of terrified residents surfaced online. Haydar buried his brothers Sunday.

Sheha was part of a group of Alawite civilians that sought to build bridges with the new government.

He said the Alawites can’t be blamed for the crimes of Assad’s forces. Most Alawites were impoverished under Assad, abused by his top aides and forced to show loyalty and serve in the army, he said.

Instead of seeing inclusion and transitional justice, the community is targeted in revenge, he said. In a national dialogue convened this month by al-Sharaa, only a few Alawites were included in the 600-member conference, he said.

“Recovery from this won’t be easy,” he said.

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AP correspondent Abby Sewell in Beirut contributed to this report.