Since the end of Ramadan, which was on March 30th, there have been 42 religiously motivated killings of Alawites in Syria. The incidents have occurred from Latakia to Tartus and into the country’s interior in Homs. The Syrian government, led by former Al-Qaeda in Iraq commander Ahmad al-Sharaa, justified the killings as “errors” committed in the course of suppressing the rebellion against what they claimed were remnants of the Assad regime.
However, an Alawite living in the Latakia region told the AP news agency that there are still regular attacks on Alawites, most of whom have nothing to do with the former Syrian President Bashar al-Assad or his security forces. Among the victims are Alawites who suffered under Assad’s rule. Activist Mohammed Saleh, a former political prisoner, told the news agency AP that 18 of his Alawite friends who opposed Assad were massacred by government-affiliated forces in the past month.
On March 9th, the self-proclaimed president and Islamist al-Sharaa appointed an investigation committee to complete a report within 30 days that would help identify and hold accountable the perpetrators of the massacre. However, on April 11th, al-Sharaa extended the deadline for the report by three more months. Reuters reported that Alawite residents of the coastal province of Latakia, where most of the violence occurred, expressed their concern that the investigation was not genuine.
As the head of the Nusra Front, the official Al-Qaeda affiliate in Syria, al-Sharaa demanded in an interview with Al Jazeera in 2015 that Alawites convert to Sunni Islam or be killed.