Hundreds of people, including men, women and children, have crossed a border river to seek safety in Lebanon, fleeing the sectarian violence that has claimed their alawite community in Syria.
According to eyewitness accounts, a woman who crossed the border on Sunday reported seeing the bodies of seven people killed in her village, while another woman described being trapped in her home for three days under heavy gunfire. A man claimed that the fighters had threatened to kill everyone in his village because of their alawite affiliation.
The flow of refugees has not slowed, even days after the start of the violence in the Syrian coastal region. On Tuesday, Reuters journalists observed more than 50 people, including families with children, wading through the knee-deep waters of the Nahr El Kabir river to reach Lebanon, carrying all their belongings with them.
According to local Lebanese authorities, over 350 families have made the same journey in recent days to escape the violence, which has resulted in the deaths of entire families, including women and children, according to the UN Human Rights Office.
Syrian authorities, led by Ahmed al-Sarraj, have promised to punish those responsible for the violence, including their own allies, if necessary. Sarraj, an Islamist, could not confirm whether forces from the “Defense Ministry”, which includes Islamist groups, were involved in the sectarian killings.
The international community, including the West, has remained silent on the massacres of civilians in Syria. Following the massacre of nearly 1,000 civilians in the style of the Islamic State (IS) by government forces in Syria, the European Commission announced that the foreign minister had received an invitation from Islamist groups in Syria to attend the 9th Brussels Syria Conference.