The Syrian city was almost empty in early March, its streets strewn with burned cars. The stores were looted, their windows broke and locks fired. Some buildings were hardly more than blackened walls and ashes.
Emergency workers had transformed a furniture store looted into a makeshift morgue. A white van pulled up, a pair of feet hanging on the back in pink socks with white peas. A few minutes later, an ambulance arrived with two other bodies, then a blue van appeared by carrying more.
Nearby, the men pleaded with emergencies to help recover the remains of their loved ones killed.
“There are seven bodies in this building.”
“There is another body in the place.”
“There are at least 40 bodies on a single road.”
The city, Baniyas, was the site of some of the worst violence in Syria last month, when thousands of armed men stormed the Mediterranean coast of the country and killed more than 1,600 civilians, mainly from the Allawite religious minority.
For three days, the armed men went home to be house, briefly executing civilians and opening fire in the streets, according to dozens of residents who spoke to the New York Times.
My colleagues and I managed to introduce us to the city for almost a day when the murders took place. What we found was proof of a massacre – and a large failure of the new government led by the rebels to protect the Alawites, the group that dominated Syria’s elite circles during the dictatorship of the Assad family.
