The shooting began at dawn on Friday in the city of Al-Haffa on the Syrian Mediterranean coast.
Initially, Wala, a 29-year-old city resident, jumped from the bed to the corner of the room in her first floor apartment, straightening as the rat’s rat sounded in front of the bedroom window.
When the crowd was getting louder, she said, she came to the window and peeled the curtain. Outside, dozens of people flee down the road, many in pajamas, while four men in forest green uniforms chased them. Then the uniformed men opened the fire. Within a few seconds, four people who fled were killed on the ground.
“I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. I was terrified, terrified,” said Wala, who asked me to identify me only her name for fear of retaliation.
The attack in her city was part of the unrest that shook the Syrian coast Over the last four days and has killed more than 1,000 people, the war group of surveillance of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights announced early on Sunday. It was the bloodiest outburst of violence since the rebels kicked the longtime dictator, Bashar Al-Assad, in early December, and then sought to claim their authority over the country, ended by almost 14 years of civil war.
The violence broke out on Thursday when armed men loyal to Mr. Al-Assad sat down the government security forces in the Latakia province, where Al-Haffa is located. The ambushes of conflict between Assad’s loyalist and government forces started.
Observatory, based in Britain and has been overseeing Syrian conflict since 2011, said early Sunday that about 700 civilians were among more than 1,000 dead, most of which killed government forces.
At least 65 civilians were killed in al-Hafffi, according to Observatory.
Another war monitoring group, the Syrian Network for Human Rights, reported on Saturday that government safety forces killed about 125 civilians. These claims cannot be checked independently.
Officials with the new government have rejected charges that her security forces have committed crimes. But they said they were dedicated to researching the accusations and holding everyone who had harmed civilians responsible.
The violence has raised a spectrum of a major sectative conflict in Syria and extinguished panic in the coastal provinces of Latakia and truffle. The region is the heart of the Syrian minority Alawita, which dominated in the ruling class and the upper rows of military under the Government of Assad, and included Family Assad is. The new government originated from the coalition of the rebel led by the Islamist Sunni Muslim group.
Observatory said most civilians killed have been alavita in recent days.
On Saturday, the highway that leads from the capital, Damasca to Tartus is almost empty as the authorities have tried to seal all traffic to the coastal region. Government security forces set up control points along the main roads in Tartus, a provincial capital, where most stores were closed and many residents descended in their homes.
Shadi Ahmed Khodar, 47, was sitting next to the highway that led from the truffle of the north to Latakia, watching the occasional ambulance or government vehicle pass. The streets of his neighborhood emptied that violence was raging in recent days, turning truffles into a ghost town, he said. He is Alawaite, but like many in the city, he said he did not support Assad’s loyalists who took weapons against new Syrian authorities.
But he was also terrified that security forces with the new government would no longer distinguish between armed loyalists Assad and people like him – a crane operator who worked for the Assad government.
“Maybe he’ll just come here and say we’re against them and kill us,” he said.
The earth, he was afraid, threw himself toward multiple conflicts. The violence had yet to give up late on Saturday afternoon, and down the road from where it was standing, the government’s forces at the control point warned drivers that armed cars were sitting cars driving along the shore towards Latakia.
“We are only in shallow water,” Mr. Khodar said. “We haven’t reached the depth yet.”
In the nearby village of Latakia Province, armed loyalists Assad held dozens of government staff for staff as hostages after they took control a day before, residents said. In other areas, local residents took over weapons and stationed outside their homes to protect their families after hearing reports on government forces killed by civilians.
In Baniyas, a city on the north top of Tartus Province, armed people who, they seemed to be with the Government, entered the predominantly Alawith district in the city on Thursday night, according to four residents.
Ghaith Moustafa, a resident of Baniyas, said he spent most of Friday and Saturday with his wife Hala Hamed and their two-month son behind their front door-one-in-a-place place in their small apartment that was not near any window.
Early on Friday morning, he said he heard the shooting become louder as the armed people reached his building. Then he heard men shouting, shooting and screams come from the apartment underneath. He later learned that his neighbors had been killed in himself.
“I was so scared for my child, for my wife,” said Mr. Moustafa, 30, in a telephone conversation. “So she was afraid. I didn’t know how to show her that I was afraid for us too.”
When the shooting fell silent at about 2 pm on Saturday, Mr. Moustafa said that he and his family fled their apartment and sought refuge in a friend’s house in a nearby neighborhood that was spared great violence. Driving from home, he was horrified.
Every two or three meters, the body lay on the ground, he said. The blood stains are smeared over the roadway. The windows at the outlets were broken and many shops seemed to be robbed, he said.
Syrian observatory said on Saturday that at least 60 civilians, including five children, had been killed in Baniyas violence.
“I’m shocked, I’m just shocked,” said Mr. Moustafa, a pharmacist. By Saturday night, all he could think was to leave. “We have to get out of here as soon as possible,” he added. “It’s not safe, it’s not safe at all.”
Mr. Moustafa was among the hundreds of people who fled Baniyas on Saturday, towards the inhabitants. Many sought refuge with friends who were not Alawita hoping to avoid receiving more violence.
Wala, a resident of Al-Haffa who said she saw men in uniforms shooting people while they fled, in her apartment covered with friends and family when security staff knocked on the front door, about an hour after the government’s forces entered her city. A friend who visited from the northwestern Idlib region, where the rebels came from Mr. Al-Assad came from, prayed with them not to shoot.
“She said,” I’m from Idlib. All my family is from Idlib. Please don’t do anything to these people. They are a calm family, “Wala said in a telephone conversation.
The men asked her friend to hand over her phone and yelled at Wal to open her, which she did. They demanded that Wala’s mother give them their gold necklace and earrings, Wala said.
Before they left, the men issued a strict warning: Do not leave the house. She and her relatives rushed back to her bedroom, terrified.
But an hour later, as the shooting was silent, they defied the order to try to help someone they could hear from the street.
Outside Wala said she had found two men who were shot. One was covered with blood and asked in a weak voice to lift his head from the ground a little. The second, shot in the thigh, begged the water.
Before the long shooting rang, and Wala ran inside. By Saturday night, she said, she didn’t know if any man survived.
