On March 6, armed groups began entering Alawite villages in western Syria and killing the residents. On March 7, a local woman wrote to her friend abroad: “They killed four families here, women and children, I know their names. They stole cars and money and burned stores.”

According to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a UK-based organization that monitors human rights violations in Syria, over 1,500 Syrian civilians were killed in sectarian violence between March 6 and March 12. Most belonged to Syria’s Alawite minority, an offshoot of Shia Islam to which deposed president Bashar al-Assad also belonged. Before the civil war, there were around 2 million Alawites in the country, making up approximately 12 percent of the population.

Weeks earlier, on January 29, following a lightning offensive, rebel forces led by Ahmed al-Sharaa, founder of the al-Qaeda-affiliated al-Nusra Front, had overthrown the Assad government. Al-Sharaa, who has distanced himself from his jihadist past, assumed leadership of the country. Though he has promised to unite Syria under a constitution protecting its many diverse factions, al-Sharaa’s leadership sparked fears of violent retribution against vulnerable Alawites.

The Times of Israel spoke with an Alawite woman who received the message at the top of this article, and other messages like it, from friends and family still in Syria during the massacres earlier this month. Like the senders, the recipient, who is now living abroad with family, has requested anonymity for her own safety and has shared the messages with The Times of Israel.

According to one of the messages, another survivor wrote on March 11, four days after the attacks began, that “there are 100 bodies in the hospitals. No one has come to take them. Entire families are dead.”

On March 8, another Alawite in western Syria sent a message: “There’s sporadic shooting. Armed people are here. If something happens to me, tell people what happened.”

While no other independent........

© The Times of Israel