Al-Haffa

What the video evidence from Al-Haffa captured is not the chaos of combat. It is the cold geometry of a mass execution — carried out with a precision that speaks to premeditation and complete impunity. Residents were rounded up and lined up in an organised row — men standing or kneeling — before being executed simultaneously. The victims are dressed in civilian clothes. Some are in pyjamas, suggesting they were pulled from their beds in the early hours. Not a single weapon is visible on any of them. The organised line-up is itself evidence. It shows the perpetrators had control of the situation, that the victims posed no threat, and that the decision to kill was coordinated in advance. This is not a crime of passion or the fog of war. It is an execution, carried out against unarmed Alawite civilians in their own village. Human rights organisations have cited the footage from Al-Haffa as among the most direct visual documentation of war crimes committed during the coastal massacres.