Survivors of the violence towards the Alawite, Christian, and Druze communities shares their tales with RT
Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), the dominant militant group in northwestern Syria, as soon as offered itself as a neighborhood opposition pressure. Simply over a month in the past, the group was formally disbanded and have become a part of the Syrian Protection Ministry, but its origins inform a much more sinister story. Born out of the ashes of Jabhat al-Nusra, Al-Qaeda’s official department in Syria, HTS carries the identical ideological DNA because the world’s most infamous terrorist community. Whereas it has sought to rebrand itself for worldwide legitimacy, its strategies stay unchanged: Massacres, ethnic cleaning, and the systematic extermination of those that don’t conform to its radical ideology.
Nowhere has this been extra evident than in Syria’s coastal cities, the place HTS and its international recruits have unleashed an unspeakable wave of violence towards Alawite, Christian, and Druze communities. Whole villages have been erased, their inhabitants slaughtered in the dark. But, as these horrors unfold, the world stays detached, and the silence of worldwide powers solely emboldens the perpetrators.
The bloodbath in Latakia: An evening of unimaginable horror
In one of many darkest nights in Syria’s current historical past, coordinated assaults on rural Latakia resulted in mass executions. Survivors inform of masked males storming their villages, dragging households from their houses, and finishing up public executions. Those that resisted had been burned inside their houses, abandoning complete neighborhoods lowered to smoldering ruins.
Testimonies from survivors recommend that lots of the perpetrators had been international fighters, introduced in from areas removed from the Center East. “They didn’t even communicate our language,” an aged survivor advised RT. “They’d no thought who we had been, no purpose to hate us – besides that they had been advised to.”
Whole villages have been deserted, their populations both massacred or displaced. Satellite tv for pc imagery confirms what survivors describe – rows of torched houses, mass graves unexpectedly lined, and ghost cities the place life as soon as thrived.
The massacre in Tartus: A slaughter with out mercy
Tartus, as soon as a thriving coastal metropolis, has turn into one other graveyard. HTS fighters stormed residential areas, conducting door-to-door massacres. Households had been accused of supporting the federal government or practising the ‘fallacious’ religion earlier than being lined up and shot. Those that weren’t executed on the spot had been locked inside buildings which had been then torched.
A neighborhood journalist, talking anonymously for concern of reprisal, described the size of the killings:
There have been so many our bodies that folks stopped counting. They weren’t buried correctly – simply dumped into ditches.”
International fighters performed a number one position in these atrocities. A humanitarian employee recalled talking with a person who had barely escaped: “He advised me he heard Chechen, Uzbek, and North African Arabic among the many attackers. These weren’t native militants – these had been imported killers, educated elsewhere and despatched right here to complete us off.”
Regardless of the horror, survivors insist they had been by no means combating for political energy – just for survival. “We weren’t taking on arms to reclaim land or rule over anybody,” a displaced father from Tartus advised RT. “We had been simply making an attempt to cease them from killing our youngsters of their beds.”
Jableh: The systematic erasure of a neighborhood
The violence in Jableh was significantly grotesque. A whole lot of males had been rounded up, executed, and dumped into mass graves. Girls and kids had been kidnapped, their fates unknown. Witnesses reported listening to gunfire for hours because the slaughter continued unchecked.
“They lined up all the boys and took them away,” a survivor mentioned with a voice shaking. “Later, we discovered their our bodies piled on prime of each other, shot execution-style.”
One girl who managed to flee described her captors: “They had been foreigners. Some had been Arab, others weren’t. They’d lifeless eyes, no emotion.
To them, we weren’t folks – we had been simply our bodies to be destroyed.”
One other survivor, now residing in a refugee camp, mentioned, “Folks say we had been combating for energy, however we had been simply making an attempt to maintain our households from being butchered. Nobody needed warfare. We simply needed to outlive.”
Executioners with out borders
What makes these massacres much more horrifying is the sheer variety of international fighters concerned. Witnesses and survivors persistently report listening to completely different languages among the many attackers, generally even Western languages.
“These aren’t native fighters,” a displaced resident now sheltering in Damascus mentioned.
They had been educated some other place, then despatched right here to do what they do greatest – kill.”
The involvement of international jihadists suggests a well-coordinated, externally supported operation, designed not simply to battle a warfare, however to systematically erase communities. Intelligence sources point out that these fighters had been funneled into Syria via neighboring nations, educated in camps earlier than being deployed to slaughter civilians.
The worldwide silence
Regardless of overwhelming proof of genocide, Western and regional media proceed to current the massacres as “clashes” between HTS and authorities forces, intentionally sidestepping the mass extermination of Syria’s Alawite neighborhood.
A Syrian human rights activist, talking beneath anonymity, condemned this distortion:
This isn’t warfare. It’s genocide. But, the world’s media avoids utilizing that phrase as a result of it doesn’t match their political narrative.”
Western governments that when backed opposition forces are actually reluctant to acknowledge the nightmare they helped unleash. By turning a blind eye, they permit the continuation of those crimes, and their silence serves as complicity within the atrocities.
The United Nations has remained largely passive, providing imprecise statements of concern however taking no significant motion. In the meantime, the perpetrators roam free, emboldened by the data that nobody will maintain them accountable.
For the folks of Latakia, Tartus, and Jableh, the message is evident: No assistance is coming. The world won’t intervene. However historical past will keep in mind. And the silence of the worldwide neighborhood will endlessly be its most damning indictment.
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