Syrian Alawis sheltering in Lebanon say it isn't safe to return home

In the middle of an abandoned school-turned-refugee camp in northern Lebanon, Khitam sat and sighed, thinking of how different her life was just over the border in Syria less than a week ago.

“On Thursday, we were seeing on Facebook that [armed groups] wanted to raid our area in Sahl Akkar,” she told Middle East Eye. “We did not believe it, as it is Facebook, most things there are disinformation.”

That night, she was spending time with some relatives, drinking mate, a South American drink popular in the Levant, when air strikes from the Syrian government began falling nearby.

“Bullets were being shot from everywhere, as if it was raining,” she said.

Initially hesitant to leave her home in Sahl Akkar, a plain near Syria’s border with northern Lebanon, Khitam and other Alawis around her started receiving threatening messages.

“Some people started sending us threats on Facebook Messenger, saying, ‘Just wait for us, we will come for you at Suhoor,’” she said, referring to the pre-fasting meal Muslims have at dawn during Ramadan.

That was when she and many others decided it was time to flee to Lebanon, sheltering in the northern Lebanese Alawi town of al-Massoudiyeh.

The violence on the Syrian coast over the past week has killed hundreds of people in the bloodiest incident since the fall of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in early December.

What started as a ruthless attack on the coastal region by Assad loyalists, many of whom are from the former president’s Alawi sect, quickly spiralled into revenge attacks on civilians, leaving hundreds dead and thousands displaced.

Civilians belonging to the Alawi community were particularly targeted. Tensions in the area had been high ever since Assad's ouster, with Alawis saying they have been victims of occasional reprisal attacks.

The Syrian Network for Human Rights, a UK-based war monitor, said that Assad loyalists, Syrian government forces and Sunni armed groups partook in what it called “extrajudicial killings”.

Syria’s government announced the end of its military operation against loyalist cells on Sunday, and interim President Ahmed al-Sharaa vowed to “hold accountable, with full decisiveness, anyone who is involved in the bloodshed of civilians, mistreats civilians, exceeds the state's authority or exploits power for personal gain.”

Killing ‘children and adults’

Many of the Syrians who crossed into Lebanon fleeing the latest surge in violence did so as soon as the first massacres started on Friday.

Badria, who escaped her small town of al-Ransiya, said that armed men in cars started shooting Alawi “children and adults”.

'After the regime was toppled, they committed massacres against us and then promised us safety, but there was no safety'

- Suleiman

While she and her family were spared, Suleiman was not as lucky in al-Alamein, a village in the Hama countryside.

“When they reached our village, they started breaking into homes,” he told MEE. “I personally lost four members of my family.”

His relatives lived on the village's main street. Suleiman considered himself luckier, he said, as his home was behind theirs, giving him and his family a little more time to escape.

Suleiman, like everyone else, fled through rural lands, avoiding roads out of fear of being stopped at a checkpoint.

“It took us a day and a half to reach this village,” he said, referring to al-Massoudiyeh.

Over 1,400 families comprising over 6,000 people entered Lebanon’s northernmost Akkar province over the past few days, Governor Imad al-Labaki said on Monday.

Al-Massoudiyeh alone is currently hosting at least 550 families, the village's mayor, Ali al-Ali, told MEE.