Massacre in village blamed on regime
BEIRUT— The bodies of the Syrian boys and young men in jeans and casual shirts were strewn along a bloodstained pavement, dying apparently where they fell. Weeping women moved among the dead, and one of them screamed, “Where are you, people of the village?” In the Syrian civil war’s latest alleged mass killing, activists said Friday that regime troops and gunmen from nearby Alawite areas beat, stabbed and shot at least 50 people in the Sunni village of Bayda. The slayings highlight in the starkest terms the sectarian overtones of a conflict that has already killed more than 70,000 people. Syria’s two-year-old crisis has largely broken along sectarian lines: the Sunni majority forms the backbone of the rebellion, while President Bashar Assad’s minority Alawite sect, an offshoot of Shiite Islam, anchors the regime’s security services and officer corps. The killings in Bayda fall against this backdrop. Tucked in the mountains outside the Mediterranean coastal city of Banias, the village is predominantly Sunni but is located in the Alawite ancestral heartland in the rugged region along the sea. Activists say fighting broke out in Bayda early Thursday and that at least six government fighters were killed. Syrian forces backed by Alawite gunmen known as shabiha from the surrounding area returned in the afternoon and stormed the village, according to the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. The gunmen torched homes and used knives, guns and blunt objects to kill people in the streets, the group said. It said it has documented the names of at least 50 dead in Bayda but dozens of villagers are still missing and the death toll could rise to as high as 100.
Amateur video showed the bodies of at least seven men and boys lying in pools of blood on the pavement in front of a house as women wept around them.
“Don’t sleep, don’t move,” one woman sobbed, leaning over to touch one of the men, who appeared already dead.
The video appears genuine and was consistent with reporting by The Associated Press from the area.
Syria’s state news agency said late Thursday that the army conducted a raid in Bayda, killing several “terrorists” — the term it uses for those trying to oust Assad — and seizing machine-guns, automatic rifles and other weapons.
Syrian troops were still in Bayda on Friday, conducting house-tohouse searches, according to the Observatory’s director, Rami Abdul-Rahman. He added that phone and Internet service to the village was cut, making it impossible to verify the death toll.
If confirmed, the bloodshed in Bayda would be the latest in a series of alleged mass killings in the civil war. Last month, activists said government troops killed more than 100 people as they seized two rebelheld suburbs of Damascus.
Months of bloodshed have sharpened the divide and unleashed sectarian hatred. The violence has ripped apart communities and brought a bloody end to decades of coexistence. Retaliatory kidnappings and killings have surged.