It is in this city, the third in the country, where Sunni Muslims, Alawites and Christians live together, that sectarian violence reached its peak during the civil war, born from the repression by the former power of a popular uprising in 2011.
At the entrance to majority Alawite areas, armed men in fatigues are stationed at checkpoints.
Two witnesses – who, like most of those interviewed by AFP, require anonymity for security reasons – claim that residents were questioned about their religious affiliation at a dam.
Shihadi Mayhoub, a former deputy from Homs, who says he joined the opposition to Bashar al-Assad in 2012, claims to have identified so far “nearly 600 names of people arrested” in his Zahra neighborhood alone. In the city as a whole, “the number of people arrested exceeds 1,380,” he said.
For AFP, Rami Abdel Rahmane, director of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, reported at least 1,800 people, mainly Alawites, arrested in Homs and its region.
Among them are, according to Mr. Mayhoub, “retired generals, colonels who have regularized their situation in dedicated centers”, and a “majority of civilians and conscripts».
In the neighboring neighborhood of al-Sabil, a group of officers were beaten in front of their wives, he said.
No news
According to residents, soldiers and conscripts who had registered and handed over their weapons, as requested by the new authorities, were also arrested.
The new leaders – in power since the capture of Damascus on December 8 by a rebel coalition led by the Islamist group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) – deny any abuse, claiming to target former members of Assad’s forces.
They repeat that they have no intention of harming minorities, in a multi-ethnic and multi-religious country.
Homs authorities have said they will release the detainees soon, according to Mayhoub, who blames the rights violations on groups allied to HTS.
«We live in fear», Testifies a resident of Zahra. “At first they said these were isolated incidents. But there is nothing isolated in so many incidents».
Another resident says he has not heard from his son, a soldier, since his arrest at a checkpoint outside the city last week.
Across Syria, violence against Alawites, long associated with the Assad clan, has increased significantly according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which has recorded at least 150 killings, mainly in the provinces of Homs and Hama, since on December 8.
“Cleaned”
In Homs, an HTS official, Abou Youssef, affirms that control operations made it possible to discover three weapons depots and “dozens of people wanted».
Supposed to end on Monday, they must continue because the districts “have not yet been completely cleansed of the remains of the diet“, he said.
«We want security for everyone: Sunnis, Alawites, Christians, everyone“, he assures.
But videos of violence are circulating online, one of them even showing a fighter trampling detainees.
Although the AFP was not able to verify all of these images, it was able to question Mahmoud Abou Ali, a member of HTS who had filmed himself ordering gathered men to squat and bark.
“Anger”
These were, he said, “chabiha”, members of the pro-Assad militias, who “had committed massacres» in Homs at the start of the war. The 21-year-old fighter explained that he wanted to express his “anger (…) in the name of all those killed”, including his parents and brothers and sisters.
In the Baba Amr district, a former rebel stronghold subject to a relentless siege by Assad’s forces, buildings are collapsed or bear bullet marks.
Frieze al-Jammal, 46, returned this week with his seven children and wife to a devastated house, after fleeing to Lebanon more than a decade ago.
«We are tired of war and humiliation, we just want everyone to be able to live their lives. We are against sectarianism“, he assures.
Par Le360 (with AFP)
01/11/2025 at 7:55 a.m.
