News - Middle East: Syria’s Alawite community has staged a mass rally against widespread abductions and sectarian murders by the armed militants of Hayat Tahrir al‑Sham (HTS) group, which seized the helm of the Arab country’s government after removing former president Bashar al-Assad from power in December last year.

The protest was staged on Thursday after the kidnapping of Mohammed Qais Haidar, a 13-year-old Alawite student, in Syria’s western coastal city of Latakia, with demonstrators taking to the streets and displaying pictures of the young eighth-grader as they demanded immediate action from authorities.

The rally was accompanied by a general strike, including the closure of commercial shops, across Latakia, and parents refrained from sending their children to schools in protest against the mounting incidents of killing, kidnapping and harassment of Syrian Alawites by the HTS militants.

The 13-year-old was kidnapped by “gunmen” in front of Jamal Dawood School in Latakia in broad daylight and in full view of his classmates on Wednesday, and they used two vehicles to disperse bystanders before fleeing, according to local media reports and eyewitnesses.

“Armed men belonging to Syrian government security forces, known as General Security, driving a silver Hyundai Santa Fe, abducted eighth-grade student Mohammad Qais Haidar,” the rights advocacy group Syrian Justice Archive (SJT) reported.

The SJT said Haidar’s family is well known in Latakia as his father is a university professor and his mother is a schoolteacher, adding that the kidnapping occurred in an area presumed to be safe and under the watch of local security forces stationed near the school.

State media cited Syrian security forces in Latakia as saying that an investigation has been launched into the kidnapping of the 13-year-old student.

The abduction came a day after the brutal killing of an Alawite school teacher in Homs Province on October 7, as well as a slew of other murders in recent days.

Liyal Dammar Ghreib, a mother of four from the al-Zahraa neighborhood, was shot and killed by two fighters from the “General Security” in Homs, SJT said, stressing that she was killed outside the Walid al-Najjar School in the Jubb al-Jandali neighborhood as she was arriving for work.

The so-called Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR), a Britain-based war monitor, warned that the surge in kidnappings in Alawite-majority areas “threatens to repeat scenes of fear among both parents and students alike” amid a lack of effective security measures.

According to local reports, a Shia man, Ali Muhammad Madah, was kidnapped from his home in the al-Abbasiyah neighborhood in Homs on Wednesday by gunmen linked to the HTS. The militant group stole money from his house, assaulted the women inside, and later demanded a ransom of 600 million Syrian pounds ($55,000).

The body of an Alawite man, Nidal Ahmad Salloum, was found on Thursday, two days after he was kidnapped in the city of Hama. Salloum was originally from the town of al-Mahrousa, in the al-Ghab Plain in western Syria.

Earlier, an Alawite man from the town of Mahrousa in the Masyaf countryside of Hama was found dead, with the SOHR saying he was killed after being kidnapped by unknown gunmen.

The abductions and murders take place amid broader political instability following an Israeli-US-backed sweeping raid on Syria’s western provinces by HTS militants — led by Ahmad al-Shaara (also known by his nom de guerre, Abu Mohammed al‑Jolani) — and the collapse of Assad on December 8, 2024.

Violence targeting Syria’s Alawite community persists in the aftermath of the brutal campaign executed by HTS security forces in March.

According to the SOHR, a minimum of 1,600 Alawite civilians were killed in at least 55 distinct massacres during three days beginning on March 7, which were also marked by the organized looting and incineration of their residences.

The collapse of the government in Damascus has, since December, seen the Israeli military launching airstrikes against Syrian soil, including military installations, facilities, and arsenals belonging to the Arab country’s now-defunct army.

Source: Press TV