The clamor for vengeance surged to a breaking point on March 6.

A torrent of messages flooded social media, posted by various armed factions and disseminated to hundreds of thousands of Syrians, calling for a "general mobilization"—or "al nafeer"—to quash an emerging insurgency led by supporters of deposed and widely reviled leader Bashar al-Assad.

Convoys of armed fighters in hundreds of pickup trucks, along with tanks and heavy artillery, barreled down major highways toward the coastal strongholds of the minority Alawite sect to which Assad belonged. Their mission was one of retribution against loyalists of the ousted president, primarily his former Alawite officers, some of whom had allegedly launched hit-and-run attacks on the new military in an effort to stage a coup against the Sunni Islamist-led government.

By the night of March 6 and into the early hours of March 7, pro-government fighters stormed the Al-Qusour neighborhood in the city of Baniyas—one of the first major highway exits—unleashing gunfire on residential buildings and slaughtering families in their homes. Similar massacres unfolded in a string of towns and villages further north along the coast, including Al-Mukhtariya, Al-Shir, Al-Shilfatiyeh, and Barabshbo, areas where the Alawite community is concentrated.

“I heard children screaming, gunfire, and my father trying to calm them down,” recounted Hassan Harfoush, an Alawite from Al-Qusour now living in Iraq. He described his final phone call with his family before his parents, brother, sister, and her two children were executed in their home on the afternoon of March 7.

"My father told me: 'Pray for us. They've arrived.'"

Harfoush had fled Syria months earlier at his father’s insistence, fearing a wave of reprisals against Alawites. “He told me to leave so at least one of us would survive.”

Within a span of six days, hundreds of Alawite civilians lay dead, according to reports from Reuters and multiple monitoring groups. Just three months after Assad’s December ouster brought an end to his brutal rule and nearly 14 years of civil war, parts of western Syria had spiraled into an orgy of revenge-fueled bloodshed.

Piecing together the timeline of the carnage, Reuters interviewed more than 25 survivors and relatives of victims, analyzed drone footage, and reviewed dozens of social media posts and videos. However, the news agency could not determine if the attacks on Alawite enclaves were orchestrated as part of a coordinated government strategy.

Three verified videos posted on social media between March 7-13 depict a grim reality: the same residential street in the Al-Qusour neighborhood of Baniyas, Tartous, littered with the bodies of the slain. Reuters confirmed the location by cross-referencing road layouts, vehicles, buildings, and telephone poles with satellite imagery.

The Syrian government—now controlled by former members of the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) rebel group—declined to comment on the events. However, interim President Ahmed al-Sharaa decried the massacres as a direct challenge to his efforts to unite the country, vowing to hold perpetrators accountable, even if they were affiliated with the new administration.

"We fought to protect the oppressed, and we will not tolerate bloodshed that goes unpunished—even among our own ranks," Sharaa told Reuters in a recent interview.

While he blamed Assad loyalists for instigating the violence, he conceded that "many factions entered the Syrian coast, and numerous violations occurred." Years of pent-up sectarian grievances had erupted into unbridled violence, he acknowledged.

Reuters reached out to several Assad loyalists who had called for retaliatory violence online, but none responded.

The Syria Network for Human Rights (SNHR), a UK-based monitoring group, reported that more than 1,000 people were killed in the violence—over half of them by forces aligned with the new authorities, while others fell at the hands of Assad loyalists. According to SNHR, the dead included 595 civilians and unarmed fighters, the vast majority of them Alawite. Reuters geolocated videos from social media showing over 120 bodies across at least six locations in the coastal provinces of Latakia and Tartous.

The fall of Assad—whose Alawite sect is an offshoot of Shi’ite Islam—marked the rise of an Islamist-led government dominated by HTS, a group with origins in al Qaeda-affiliated organizations. Many Sunnis, who comprise more than 70% of Syria’s population, had long felt politically and economically sidelined under the Assad dynasty.

The new government is now scrambling to integrate dozens of rebel factions into its security forces. It relies primarily on its own recruits under the General Security Service (GSS), but foreign militias have also been deployed to fill the security void left by Assad’s dismantled defense apparatus.

According to multiple witnesses, the massacres were largely executed by gunmen from factions aligned with the new government, including the GSS. A video verified by Reuters showed uniformed men bearing GSS arm patches participating in violence in the coastal city of Jableh.

GSS officials did not respond to requests for comment. However, a member of the force told Reuters that he and dozens of others were deployed to the coast on March 6 to root out pro-Assad fighters, returning to their Aleppo base days later. He insisted that GSS fighters had not targeted civilians, attributing the mass killings to "undisciplined fighters" who had joined the general mobilization calls.

"Anyone with a weapon joined in," he said.

Assad’s 24-year rule left behind a deep and festering sectarian divide. His escape to Moscow in December exacerbated tensions, with many Sunnis seeking vengeance against his loyalists.

The situation escalated further on March 6 when the government reported that fighters led by Alawite ex-officers of Assad’s military had carried out one of their deadliest attacks yet, killing 13 government security forces in Latakia province. No group claimed responsibility.

Reuters reviewed multiple online calls urging Syrians to head to the coast for the general mobilization. One Facebook page with over 400,000 followers, allegedly linked to the GSS, encouraged Arab tribes to support government forces against Alawite insurgents, while WhatsApp groups coordinated localized gathering points for fighters to mobilize.

In Damascus and Aleppo, residents told Reuters they heard Sunni mosques amplifying calls for jihad over loudspeakers. A Damascus-based imam, Mohsen Ghosn, delivered a fiery sermon denouncing Alawite insurgents and urging Sunnis to take up arms—footage of which was later posted online. Neither Ghosn nor Syria’s religious affairs ministry responded to requests for comment.

While the scale of the mobilization remains unclear, drone footage from March 7 captured a surge of fighters heading to the coast. The images showed hundreds of vehicles—including trucks packed with armed men, military transports, and at least two tanks—flooding the highways east of Latakia, near Al-Mukhtariya.

The UN Human Rights Office told Reuters that its investigations confirmed a rapid mobilization of fighters, comprising both armed groups and civilians. However, the chaos of the attacks made it difficult to determine who was responsible for specific atrocities.

"Many attackers were masked, making identification challenging," a spokesperson said. "The structure and chain of command within the caretaker government’s security forces remain unclear."

HOUSE-TO-HOUSE SLAUGHTER

In Al-Qusour, where Harfoush’s family was killed, the bloodshed reached horrifying levels. According to six witnesses, fighters first rained heavy ammunition, artillery, and anti-aircraft fire onto residential buildings before storming homes and executing civilians.

One resident said militants—some in GSS uniforms, others speaking Afghan dialects—broke into his house. His identity as a Christian spared him and his family; a GSS officer intervened, preventing their murder.

His neighbors, however, were not as fortunate.

By March 7, videos circulating online showed the corpses of elderly men, women, and children strewn across roads, their bodies still bleeding—a chilling testament to Syria’s descent into sectarian retribution.