BANIYAS — On the morning of March 7, the thick scent of incense wafted through the sea air at the Sheikh Hilal Cemetery in Syria’s seaside city of Baniyas. Seagulls flew overhead as dozens of mourners laid flowers and greens on the stone graves of loved ones lost during a wave of massacres along the Syrian coast one year ago. Primarily between March 7 and March 10, more than 1,400 people —mostly from Syria’s minority Alawite community—were killed by government forces and allied armed groups in Baniyas as well as dozens of other communities along the coast and in neighboring Hama last year. The violence began after armed insurgents loyal to the ousted Assad regime attacked, captured and killed hundreds of members of the new government’s security forces on the afternoon of March 6. Over the course of the multi-day security operation and house-to-house raids that followed, mass killings took place in more than 30 Alawite-majority communities. A subsequent United Nations report described the violence as “widespread and systematic,” including “targeting based on religious affiliation, age and gender, and collective executions,” while it found “no evidence of a governmental policy or plan to carry out such attacks.” Some of the worst violence was in and around Baniyas, where hundreds were killed in Alawite neighborhoods and nearby villages over the span of three days. In 2013, the city’s Sunni Ras al-Nabaa neighborhood and the neighboring village of Bayda were also the site of mass killings by Assad regime security forces and pro-regime militias against hundreds of civilians. One year after the latest killings, members of the Alawite community in Baniyas continue to grapple with deep grief and traumatic memories. “We went through hell, it was a bloodbath in both speed and monstrosity,” Jaber Aboud, 70, told Syria Direct at his home in Baniyas. His niece and her husband were both killed on March 7, 2025. Starting the night of March 7, Aboud’s home was raided by five separate groups of armed men, he recalled, including a group of foreign fighters he believed to be Uyghurs and Uzbeks based on their appearance and accents. “My brother and I faced death five times. One group entered the house, turned it upside down, asked me if we were Alawite or Muslim, then called us ‘Alawite dogs.’ They held guns to our heads—we were waiting for the time of our execution,” he said. Jaber Aboud stands in front of his sweets shop in downtown Baniyas, 7/3/2026 (Karam Alhindi/Syria Direct) Aboud was opposed to the former Assad regime and participated in protests during the revolution, for which he was one of the first people in Baniyas to be arrested and tortured by regime security forces. Then, in 2013, he helped one of his Sunni employees at his sweets shop flee to opposition-controlled areas after sheltering him for two months in his home, he said. The young man went on to join the opposition faction Jabhat al-Nusra in Idlib, which later became Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS).
Originally reported by Syria Direct. Published on ABN12.