ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - A Sweden-based Christian human rights watchdog on Monday reported that at least four Christians have been killed and several Christian villages evacuated due to recent violence in western Syria.
"These massacres that unfolded [in regions along] Syria’s [western] coast, while primarily targeting Alawites, who suffered the most casualties, also led to the killing of Christians," said the director of the Assyrian Monitor For Human Rights, Cemil Diyarbakirli, to Rudaw’s Dilbixwin Dara.
The recent violence erupted in the Alawite-majority regions in western Syria, after loyalists of toppled Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad on Thursday launched attacks against security forces affiliated with the new leadership in Damascus.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights on Monday said that around 1,500 people - mostly civilians - have been killed since the violence began.
At least 973 civilians, mostly from the Alawite community which Assad belongs to, are among the death toll, the UK-based Observatory added, noting that most of them were killed by government and government-affiliated forces.
Diyarbakirli said his group documented the killing of four Christians and recorded ten incidents of raiding and looting of homes and businesses belonging to members of the Christian community.
Several Christian villages were also evacuated and subsequently looted and raided, the head of the human rights watchdog added.
The deputy director of the Syria-based Assyrian Democratic Organization, Bashir Saadi, corroborated to Rudaw that four Christians were indeed killed in the bloody clashes in west Syria. He said that while one was killed by accident due to a stray bullet, three others were executed.
Saadi said that attacks against civilians were driven by “revenge” and that what unfolded in western Syria in the past few days “changed public sentiment into dismay across all of Syria’s constituents.”
Of note, a well-placed source in Latakia, told Rudaw on Monday that the number of verified Christian casualties was at least eight.
Syria’s defense ministry on Monday reported that its forces had pushed the “remnants of the former regime” out of central coastal provinces such as Latakia and Tartous, declaring victory in their military operations.
Syria’s interim President Ahmed al-Sharaa had a day prior ordered the establishment of an "independent national committee" to investigate the deadly clashes in the western region. He also pledged to form another high-level committee to “preserve civil peace” and to engage with the people of the coastal areas in the aftermath of the recent bloodshed.
