(Damascus) Syrian security forces launched a “search operation” on Thursday in Homs, a city in central Syria, official media announced, targeting neighborhoods of the Alawite minority from which the Assad clan comes, according to a report. NGOs.
Posted at 6:49 a.m.
“The Ministry of the Interior, in cooperation with the Department of Military Operations, is beginning a large-scale search operation in the neighborhoods of Homs,” said a security official quoted by the Sana agency.
The operation targets “war criminals and people involved in crimes, who refused to hand over their weapons and go to regularization centers” as well as “fugitives, ammunition and hidden weapons”, according to this source .
The authorities added that they had been informed that members of “Assad’s militias” were still in certain parts of Homs and had not handed over their weapons to the new power.
Since the lightning offensive led by Islamist rebels which allowed them to take power in December, the transitional government has been registering former conscripts and soldiers and asking them to hand over their weapons.
Authorities imposed a curfew in certain neighborhoods and sent infantry troops and “armored forces” to search for “those who refuse to regularize their situation and hand over their weapons” in Homs, Sana reported.
The Interior Ministry called on residents of predominantly Alawite neighborhoods to “stay at home and fully cooperate with our forces.”
“A tank entered our neighborhood and we heard calls over loudspeakers asking us to move away from the windows, and heavy gunfire,” a witness from the Akrama neighborhood told AFP, under cover of anonymity.
“We heard that they were entering houses and searching them, and that young men were being arrested there,” he added.
-“Threatened” unit
This operation targets predominantly Alawite neighborhoods, the minority branch of Shiite Islam from which ousted President Bashar al-Assad comes, Rami Abdel Rahman, director of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, told AFP. .
“The campaign aims to search for former members of the shabiha [milices pro-gouvernementales] and those who organized or participated in the Alawite protests last week, which the administration considered to incite against its authority,” he said.
“What is happening today in Homs, the violation of homes and the sectarian death threats […] threatens the unity of Syria,” Mouna Ghanem, a former opponent of the overthrown regime, said on Facebook.
We must unite […] and make everyone understand that we will not accept a new Assad.
Mouna Ghanem, a former opponent of the overthrown regime
On December 25, thousands of people demonstrated in several Syrian regions after the release of a video showing an attack on an Alawite shrine in the north.
AFP could not verify the authenticity of the video, but the Interior Ministry said it was “old and dates back to the liberation of Aleppo”, the major city in northern Syria, early December.
Despite repeated assurances from the new authorities, the Alawites fear reprisals, as a religious minority and because of their proximity to the Assad family.
Last week, security forces launched an operation against pro-Assad fighters in the coastal province of Tartous, an Alawite stronghold, after deadly fighting with gunmen affiliated with the former power.
