Death squads of Western-friendly militants keep massacring minorities in Syria: Reports

A series of investigative media reports indicate that back-to-back large-scale massacres and little-checked bloodshed have fueled anger against Western-backed HTS leader Abu Mohammed al-Jolani, once affiliated with al-Qaeda and Daesh. 

Since December last year, Jolani’s Hay'at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) security forces have gone on a killing spree targeting Syria's minority groups.

The massacres have raised concerns for the safety of religious and ethnic minorities in the Arab country.

The reports also indicate fury over the mass killings is now also threatening HTS' control over parts of the country.

According to several reports, Syrian forces, dominated by the HTS and other militant groups, have continued to carry out sectarian killings, kidnappings, and persecution across Syria. 

The HTS rulers have enjoyed unconditional backing by the United States, Europe and the monarchies of Arab states in the Persian Gulf region with sanctions relief and financial support.

This happened despite Jolani forces killing hundreds of civilians from the Assad family’s sect Alawites, in March. Then came the killing spree in a province called Sweida.

The bloodshed began over the summer with a feud between warring militias. But as thousands of HTS militants flooded into the area, ostensibly to quell the fighting, the opposite took place: a bloody rampage against civilians.

Thousands of combatants and civilians — the vast majority from the Druse religious minority — were killed. It was one of the deadliest outbursts of sectarian violence since Syria’s new HTS authorities took power in December last year.

It was also a turning point for the Arab country. To many Syrians, the massacre in Sweida made clear a pattern of HTS-led forces targeting and killing Syrian minorities, with few repercussions.

A series of new videos has now emerged, uncovering execution-style atrocities against civilians carried out by HTS militants against minorities across various parts of the country over the past months.

In many videos posted online, HTS-affiliated militants regularly refer to both Alawites and Druze as “pigs” before executing them in their homes and on the street.

HTS forces kill Syrians with ‘one hand on gun, another on camera’: Report

Shocking footage circulating on social media has revealed the brutal execution of unarmed Druze civilians by armed elements affiliated with Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) in the southern Syrian province of Sweida.

Media outlets also interviewed dozens of witnesses and analyzed hundreds of videos of the mayhem.

The New York Times, in a recent report, said it documented at least five separate episodes of men in military fatigues summarily executing Druse civilians, including groups of unarmed men being marched down the street to their deaths by impromptu firing squads.

HTS forces wore a range of uniforms and gunmen in plainclothes sometimes fought by their side, sometimes making it difficult to pin down whether the fighters who committed the atrocities in each case were Jolani's security forces or other armed fighters who support Syria’s new HTS leaders, the Times said.

Now, the fury over the mass killings is threatening al-Jolani's control over parts of the Arab country.

A top Druse spiritual leader is now calling for Sweida to secede from Syria altogether. Since the massacre, Druse militias have effectively barred HTS officials and the military from entering much of the province.

The Druze minority and Alawite community had a history of supporting the Assad government and standing against Israeli occupation and expansionist policies, including in the occupied Golan Heights.

The consequences have spilled into other parts of the country, too. After the mass killings in Sweida, Kurdish minority forces in the northeast slowed their negotiations over integrating into the new HTS-led administration. Neither region took part in the sham parliamentary elections that began this month.

Rights groups earlier documented the violent deaths of nearly 10,000 people across Syria under the brutal HTS rule.

After the collapse of the al-Assad government last December, Jolani was widely praised by the Western media. An article in the UK's Telegraph described his armed group, the former al-Qaeda affiliated HTS, as “diversity-friendly militants.”

EU lifts sanctions against Syria as HTS moves to normalize ties with Israel

The European Union has lifted economic sanctions imposed against Syria, as the new administration in the Arab country expressed readiness to normalize ties with the Israeli regime.

US President Donald Trump, during a regional tour, announced a decision to lift all sanctions against the al-Jolani regime in exchange for normalizing ties with Israel.

Jolani has assured the Western countries that Syria will “normalize relations” with Israel, recognize the regime, and exchange ambassadors by the end of 2026.

The HTS-led regime will reportedly hand over the occupied Golan Heights to Israel as part of a looming normalization deal with the illegal entity.

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