Blinken heads to Middle East for 11th time since Gaza war, truce prospects uncertain

BEIRUT: Human Rights Watch on Tuesday called on the Syrian Arab Republic’s new authorities to ensure accountability for the mass killings of hundreds of civilians in recent days in the coastal heartland of the Alawite minority.
Violence broke out Thursday as security forces clashed with gunmen loyal to former president Bashar Assad, who is Alawite, in areas along the Mediterranean coast.
Since then, war monitor the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said security forces and allied groups had killed at least 1,093 civilians, the vast majority Alawites.
“Syria’s new leaders promised to break with the horrors of the past, but grave abuses on a staggering scale are being reported against predominantly Alawite Syrians in the coastal region and elsewhere in Syria,” said HRW’s deputy regional director Adam Coogle.
“Government action to protect civilians and prosecute perpetrators of indiscriminate shootings, summary executions, and other grave crimes must be swift and unequivocal,” he said in a statement decrying the “coastal killing spree.”
The New York-based rights group said it was “not able to verify the number of civilians killed or displaced, but obituaries circulating on Facebook indicate hundreds were killed, including entire families.”
The wave of violence is the worst since forces led by the Islamist group Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham (HTS) launched a lightning offensive that toppled Assad on December 8, capping a 13-year civil war.
Syria’s interim President Ahmed Al-Sharaa, who led HTS, has vowed to “hold accountable, firmly and without leniency, anyone who was involved in the bloodshed of civilians.”
The defense ministry announced on Monday the end of the “military operation” seeking to root out “regime remnants” in the coastal areas.
But according to the Britain-based Observatory, another 120 civilians have been killed since then, the majority of them in Latakia and Tartus provinces on the coast — where much of the earlier violence since last week had occurred.
Authorities have announced the arrest of at least two fighters seen in videos killing civilians, the official news agency SANA reported.
HRW said that “accountability for atrocities must include all parties,” including groups like HTS and the Turkish-backed Syrian National Army that “now constitute Syria’s new security forces.”
“These groups have a well-documented history of human rights abuses and violations of international law,” it added.
HTS, which has its roots in the Syrian branch of jihadist network Al-Qaeda, is still proscribed as a terrorist organization by several governments including the United States.
Since toppling Assad and taking power, Sharaa has vowed to protect Syria’s religious and ethnic minorities.
In its statement, HRW called on the authorities to “fully cooperate with and ensure unhindered access to independent monitors.”
Syria’s presidency had announced that an “independent committee” was formed to investigate the killings.
The panel is due to hold its first press conference later Tuesday.

DAMASCUS: A Syrian fact-finding committee investigating sectarian killings during clashes between the army and loyalists of Bashar Assad said on Tuesday that no one was above the law and it would seek the arrest and prosecution of any perpetrators.
Pressure has been growing on Syria’s Islamist-led government to investigate after reports by witnesses and a war monitor of the killing of hundreds of civilians in villages where the majority of the population are members of the ousted president’s Alawite sect.
“No one is above the law, the committee will relay all the results to the entity that launched it, the presidency, and the judiciary,” the committee’s spokesperson Yasser Farhan said in a televised press conference.
The committee was preparing lists of witnesses to interview and potential perpetrators, and would refer any suspects with sufficient evidence against them to the judiciary, Farhan added.
The UN human rights office said entire families including women and children were killed in the coastal region as part of a series of sectarian killings by the army against an insurgency by Assad loyalists.
Syria’s interim president Ahmed Al-Sharaa told Reuters in an interview on Monday that he could not yet say whether forces from Syria’s defense ministry — which has incorporated former rebel factions under one structure — were involved in the sectarian killings.
Asked whether the committee would seek international help to document violations, Farhan said it was “open” to cooperation but would prefer using its own national mechanisms.
The violence began to spiral on Thursday, when the authorities said their forces in the coastal region came under attack from fighters aligned with the ousted Assad regime.
The Sunni Islamist-led government poured reinforcements into the area to crush what it described as a deadly, well-planned and premeditated assault by remnants of the Assad government.
But Sharaa acknowledged to Reuters that some armed groups had entered without prior coordination with the defense ministry.