At his lunch break on Friday, Nabeel Zahlout, a Syrian man working as a doctor for the NHS in England, turned on his phone and found a desperate message from his niece in Syria.
Armed men had come into the family home and taken her father and two uncles, Zahlout’s three brothers, aged 52, 55, and 57, from the house.
“We’re very scared,” she typed to him in Messenger. “They were shooting when they were coming down the stairs. We are in the house. We hear shooting all around us – far away and close.”
In what appears to be some of the worst violence seen in Syria since the darkest days of the civil war, around 1,000 people were killed in 30 “massacres” targeting the Alawite religious minority on the country’s west coast on Friday and Saturday, according to the UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR).
Rami Abdulrahman, head of the observatory, said that the death toll was one of the highest since a chemical weapons attack by Assad’s forces in 2013 which killed 1,400 people in a Damascus suburb.
The family of Bashar al-Assad, the Syrian dictator toppled in December, belongs to the Alawite sect, many of whom are concentrated in Syria’s coastal regions, especially in Latakia and Tartus provinces.
Security sources in Syria’s new Islamist government said more than 300 of their members had been killed in co-ordinated attacks and ambushes by former army personnel loyal to Assad on Thursday.
Government forces subsequently launched a crackdown on pro-Assad militants, but it appears to have spiralled into revenge killings, including the execution of dozens of men in Syria’s Alawite heartlands.
Security forces loyal to the interim Syrian government in Syria’s western city of Latakia on 9 March 2025 (Photo: Omar Haj Kadour / AFP)Residents of Alawite villages and towns, including in Latakia and Tartus, said gunmen shot at them in the streets and that their homes were looted and set on fire.
Zahlout, who has been in the UK since 2018 and is now based in the north of England, told The i Paper that after receiving his niece’s message he was in shock for 20 minutes, unable to do or feel anything. He asked for permission to leave work and went home to try and find out more details about what had happened.
He learned that men had entered the house in his family’s village of Sanober in the countryside of Latakia on Friday, taking phones and any valuables.
“I found out that there were 50 killed in my village – all men except for two women,” Zahlout, 45, a married father of three daughters, said.
Syria’s interim president Ahmed al-Sharaa has launched an investigation after the killing of Alawite civilians triggered an international backlash (Photo: Syrian Presidency / AFP)He hoped his brothers might have just been taken and investigated, not killed, but lost hope as he heard that people had been killed from all of the roughly 100 houses in the village.
By Saturday morning, it had been confirmed – his brothers had been killed.
“Their bodies were just outside the door of the house,” he said. “They piled them and left them there.”
Zahlout’s family in Syria – his mother, sister-in-laws, nieces, and nephews – pulled the bodies inside the house on Saturday.
“The whole village had the same situation – bodies killed in the streets or killed inside,” he said. “No one can go outside because they are being threatened and shooting around.”
The government said it had responded to the initial attacks from Assad’s forces and blamed “individual actions” for the violence. The interim president, Ahmed al-Sharaa, yesterday called for national unity and announced the creation of a committee to investigate and identify those responsible for the violence.
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He said: “We have to preserve national unity and domestic peace, we can live together. Rest assured about Syria, this country has the characteristics for survival … What is currently happening in Syria is within the expected challenges.”
One resident of the town of Qadmous in Tartus told Reuters that people in the town and surrounding villages had fled to nearby fields to protect themselves.
He said a convoy of fighters with tanks, heavy weapons and drones had burned homes and cars along the main road near his town.
“We don’t know how many people are killed yet because they haven’t gone home and don’t plan to for the next few days,” he said, speaking anonymously for fear of reprisals.
For Zahlout and his family, they feel as though “no one cares” about their suffering.
“They are being killed, and the government is just saying they aren’t sure of what is going on – that they would send someone,” he said. “It was 24 hours of gangs killing innocent people, with no resistance.”
Zahlout said he had heard that between 40 to 50 of the surrounding villages in the countryside had experienced similar. In some villages, entire households were killed; in others, like his own, only the men.
Trying to help his family from the UK, Zahlout feels he has “no power”.
“I have no influence,” he said. “I’ve been in shock until now. I feel very angry. Sometimes, I just feel I need to cry and hug my daughter.”
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