The gunmen in Syria have shot 10 people in a “massacre” in the house of a village for the members of the president expelled from the Alawite minority of President Bashar Al-Assad, said a war monitor on Saturday.
The Syrian Observatory of Human Rights said that Friday’s attack killed “10 citizens in Arzah’s village in the northern field of Hama, which is inhabited by citizens of the Alauita sect.”
The monitor based in Great Britain, which has a large network of sources in the field in Syria, said the gunmen “hit the doors of the houses in the town and fired the people who use guns equipped with silencers” before fleeing .
The head of the Observatory, Rami Abdel Rahman, said that a child and an old woman were among the victims. He said that the gunmen “were Sunni Muslims, and the attacks carry all the characteristics of the sectarian murders.”
Syrian newspaper Al-WatanCiting a safety source in Hama, he said that the security forces “surround the Arzah area to hunt the criminals” behind the murders. He said that “former officers and soldiers” were among those who died in the attack.
A resident said AFP that two vehicles transported to seven armed men entered the town and attacked houses under the pretext of carrying out arms inspections.
The gunmen took the men out of the houses and forced them on their knees before killing them “in cold blood,” said the resident on anonymity due to the fear of reprisals.
The gunmen left and the bodies were taken to the Hama National Hospital before being buried, the resident added.
Despite the guarantees of the new rulers of Syria, who overthrew at the beginning of December, members of the Alauita community, a branch of Shiite Islam, they fear reprisals due to the bond of the minority with the Clan Assad.
Since the expulsion of Assad, violence against Alauitas has shot, and the observatory records at least 162 murders.
Earlier on Friday, the new authorities announced the arrest of Assad Atif Najib cousin, accused of orchestrating a repression in Daraa, where the 2011 Syrian uprising began.
The national uprising was brutally crushed by Assad, spiral in a civil war that killed more than half a million people.
