In a new crime against humanity, part of the ongoing pattern of systematic persecution and ethnic cleansing targeting residents of predominantly Alawite areas, elements of the de facto authorities executed the young man Abdul Hadi al-Mahmoud, a resident of al-‘Aziziyah – al-Ghab, in cold blood inside his own home, in front of his wife and children. This occurred less than 24 hours after his picture was circulated on inciting social media pages that openly called for the killing and forcible displacement of Alawites and other Syrian communities.

🔺 Only about ten days earlier, the same village witnessed another atrocity, when a grenade was thrown at the home of the Mukhtar of al-‘Aziziyah, killing his wife and leaving him with severe injuries requiring hospitalization.

🔻 These crimes fall within a coordinated and deliberate plan orchestrated by the so-called “General Security” apparatus, along with armed groups from the villages of al-Tamane‘a and al-Huweiz. The aim is to depopulate the villages of al-‘Aziziyah, al-Rasif, and Kafr ‘Aqid of their few remaining residents through extrajudicial killings, forced displacement, intimidation, and deliberate starvation, constituting grave breaches of international humanitarian law.