Baniyas

Between March 7 and 9, 2025, armed groups swept through Baniyas — a port city on the Mediterranean coast — in a neighborhood-by-neighborhood campaign targeting the city's Alawite population. What began as incursions by HTS-affiliated factions became, within hours, something systematic. Armed men in official uniforms of the new transitional authorities moved street by street through Al-Qusour and the surrounding blocks. Residents were forced out of their homes and shot on rooftops, in courtyards, in the open street. Survivors described men being asked to state their names and sect before being executed. Elderly people who could not run were killed where they stood. Families were separated at gunpoint. The violence had been prepared. In the weeks before, social media platforms and religious channels had run sustained campaigns of sectarian incitement against Baniyas's Alawite residents, framing the coming attacks as a religious obligation. That atmosphere was not background noise — it was operational groundwork. Testimony from survivors, video footage, and mass graves confirmed at least 260 martyrs, though local human rights monitors believe the actual toll is higher. Entire families were wiped out. Al-Qusour alone lost dozens of people in a single afternoon.