The clashes prompted uproar from Syrians and other countries who called on the Syrian interim government to hold those responsible for the killings accountable (Omar Haj Kadour/AFP via Getty Images)
Thousands of people are still missing after this month’s sectarian bloodbath in northwest Syria, activists at a Syrian war monitor reported.
The UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) said hundreds of other bodies were still being held in morgues in hospitals in Latakia and elsewhere.
Earlier this month, violent clashes broke out between the interim government’s security forces and loyalists to former president Bashar al-Assad.
But the violence took a sectarian turn, with targeted killings against members of the minority Alawite community to which the Assad family belongs. The executions resulted in hundreds of civilian deaths as thousands fled across the border into northern Lebanon.
The violence prompted uproar from Syrians and other countries, who have urged the Syrian interim government to hold those behind the killings accountable.
The SOHR recorded 62 “massacres” in coastal regions and other provinces, with 1,614 killed between 6 and 20 March.
They include 836 people killed in the Latakia, 503 in Tartus, 262 in Hama and 13 in Homs.
“The violations on the coast did not stop at looting, displacing and massacring the Alawites. They extended to even more brutal practices, such as keeping bodies instead of handing them over to their families,” the SOHR said.
“In many cases, bodies were gathered into mass graves for burial or even cremation, with no clear understanding of the true purpose behind this – whether to efface the victims’ identities or completely erase their traces. This reflects the scale of the atrocities committed in the region”.
The number of people killed is believed to be higher with many missing persons whose fates remain unknown, and bodies of dead individuals in hospitals in the coastal region who have not yet been received by their families, the observatory added.
It called for the formation of an independent, international investigations committee to probe the killings and called for the protection of civilians and to prevent such incidents from reoccurring.
The government in Damascus had already announced it was investigating the killings, and interim President Ahmed al-Sharaa said foreign powers helped trigger the clashes “to foment unrest and create communal discord,” in an apparent reference to Iran.
Assad was an ally of Tehran, which armed thousands of militants to fight alongside the former regime during Syria’s 13-year civil war. Syria also acted as a main weapons supply route for the Iran-backed Hezbollah militant group in Lebanon.
The fall of Assad’s regime dealt a heavy blow to Iran’s influence in the region, as well as to Hezbollah, which had already come out battered by the war with Israel last year.
