LATAKIA (SYRIA): The young man’s heart was sliced from his chest and placed on his body. His name was No. 56 on a handwritten list of 60 dead that included his cousins, neighbors and at least six children from their coastal Syrian village.
The men who killed 25-year-old Suleiman Rashid Saad called his father from the young victim’s phone and dared him to fetch the body. It was next to the barbershop.
“His chest was wide open. They cut out his heart. They put it on top of his chest,” said his father, Rashid Saad. It was late afternoon on March 8 in the village of Al-Rusafa. The killings of Alawites were nowhere near over.
The slaughter of Suleiman Rashid Saad was part of a wave of killings by Sunni fighters in Alawite communities along Syria’s Mediterranean coast from March 7 to 9. The violence came in response to a day-old rebellion organized by former officers loyal to ousted President Bashar al-Assad that left 200 security forces dead, according to the government.
A Reuters investigation has pieced together how the massacres unfolded, identifying a chain of command leading from the attackers directly to men who serve alongside Syria’s new leaders in Damascus. Reuters found nearly 1,500 Syrian Alawites were killed and dozens were missing. The investigation revealed 40 distinct sites of revenge killings, rampages and looting against the religious minority, long associated with the fallen Assad government.
The days of killing exposed the deep polarization in Syria that its new government has yet to overcome, between people who supported Assad, whether tacitly or actively, and those who hoped the rebellion against him would ultimately succeed. Many in Syria resent Alawites, who enjoyed disproportionate influence inside the military and government during Assad’s two-decade rule.
The findings come as the Trump administration is gradually lifting sanctions on Syria that date back to Assad’s rule. The rapprochement is an awkward one for Washington: Syria’s new government is led by a now-dissolved Islamist faction, formerly known as Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, or HTS, which was previously al-Qaeda’s Syria branch, known as the Nusra Front.
The group, formerly led by new Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa, has been under U.N. sanctions since 2014. Al-Sharaa, a Sunni Muslim like the majority of Syrians, became president in January after leading a surprise offensive that culminated in the collapse of Assad’s government and the capture of Damascus.
At least a dozen factions now under the new government’s command, including foreigners, took part in the March killings, Reuters found. Nearly half of them have been under international sanctions for years for human rights abuses, including killings, kidnapping, and sexual assaults.
Syria’s government, including the Defense Ministry and president’s office, did not respond to a detailed summary of the findings of this report or related questions from Reuters about the role of government forces in the massacres.
In an interview with Reuters just days after the killings, al-Sharaa denounced the violence as a threat to his mission to unite the country. He promised to punish those responsible, including those affiliated with the government if necessary.
\”We fought to defend the oppressed, and we won\’t accept that any blood be shed unjustly, or goes without punishment or accountability, even among those closest to us,\” he said.
Among the units Reuters found to be involved were the government\’s General Security Service, its main law-enforcement body back in the days when HTS ran Idlib and now part of the Interior Ministry; and ex-HTS units like the elite Unit 400 fighting force and the Othman Brigade. Also involved were Sunni militias that had just joined the government’s ranks, including the Sultan Suleiman Shah Brigade and Hamza division, which were both sanctioned by the European Union for their role in the deaths. The EU has not sanctioned the ex-HTS units. The United States hasn’t issued any sanctions over the killings.
President al-Sharaa has ordered a committee to investigate the violence and set up “civil peace” mediations.
Yasser Farhan, the spokesperson of the committee, said the president will receive its findings in two weeks as the committee is currently analyzing information then writing its final report based on testimonies and information gathered from over 1,000 people, in addition to briefings from officials and interrogations of detainees. He advised Reuters against publishing its findings before the report\’s release.
“We are unable to provide any responses before completing this process in respect for the integrity of the truth,” he said, adding, “I expect that you will find the results useful, and that they uncover the truth.\”
Killings continue to this day, Reuters has found. Syria’s new government has said it feared losing control of the coast to the uprising of Assad supporters. It issued unequivocal orders on March 6 to crush an attempted coup of “Fuloul ,” or “remnants” of the regime, according to six fighters and commanders and three government officials.
Many men who received the commands had been wearing government uniforms for just a few months and shared an interpretation of Sunni Islam notorious for its brutality.
Some that day eagerly interpreted the word “fuloul” to mean any and all Alawites, a minority of 2 million people whom many in Syria blame for the crimes of the Assad family, who are Alawite.
One official of the new government, Ahmed al-Shami, the governor of Tartous province, told Reuters that Alawites are not being targeted. He acknowledged “violations” against Alawite civilians, and estimated around 350 people died in Tartous, in line with what Reuters also found. That figure has never been published by the government.
“The Alawite sect is not on any list, black, red or green. It’s not criminalized and it’s not targeted for retaliation. The Alawites faced injustice just like the rest of the Syrian people in general” under Assad, the governor said. “The sect needs safety. It’s our duty as a government which we will work on.”
In response to a request for comment on Reuters’ findings, Anouar El Anouni, a spokesperson for the European Union, noted that the EU had condemned “horrific crimes committed against civilians, by all sides,” but did not say why former HTS units were not also sanctioned.
Spokespeople for the U.S. State and Treasury Departments did not respond to requests for comment.
Hundreds of thousands of Syrians are estimated to have been killed since 2011, when Assad’s crackdown on protests descended into civil war. He went after any suspected dissidents. But Sunnis, who fielded the most visible of the armed groups arrayed against Assad, were disproportionately targeted.
Reuters spoke with over 200 families of victims during visits to massacre sites and by phone, 40 security officials, fighters and commanders, and government-appointed investigators and mediators. Reuters also reviewed messages from a Telegram chat established by a Defense Ministry official to coordinate the government response to the pro-Assad uprising. The news agency’s journalists examined dozens of videos, obtained CCTV footage and reviewed handwritten lists of victims’ names.