Insurgents kill 19 and capture dozens seizing Syrian Alawite village - Observatory

Insurgents killed at least 19 civilians believed to be from families of fighters loyal to the Syrian government after  capturing an Alawite village from government control in western Syria on Thursday, a monitoring group said.      

 

Dozens of people are still missing, believed to have been abducted, from the village of al-Zara, which lies close to a main highway linking the western cities of Homs and Hama, the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said on Friday.

 

The Observatory said the attackers included major Islamist rebel group Ahrar al-Sham and the al Qaeda-affiliated Nusra Front. 

 

An Ahrar al-Sham official could not be reached by phone and did not immediately respond to a text message from Reuters seeking comment.  

 

The 19 dead, who included six women, are believed to have been killed as rebels stormed houses during their attack on al-Zara, said the Observatory, which monitors the war through a network of sources.      

 

The Alawites are a minority sect, an offshoot of Shi'ite Islam. Syrian President Bashar al-Assad is an Alawite.   

 

Government forces trying to re-take the village have used air strikes and barrel bombs. The government and their allies were still fighting insurgents nearby, the monitoring group said. 

 

At least eight of the rebels had been killed, it said. The insurgents had also captured government fighters.   

 

The village of al-Zara is about 35 km (22 miles) north of Homs and a similar distance south of Hama. 

 

Government forces and their allies have battled insurgents around the highway between the two cities, and towns in the area were among the first hit when Russia's air force intervened in the Syrian war last September.  

 

The Observatory said the insurgent attack was part of an assault they called "revenge for Aleppo", a reference to the northern city where an escalation of violence by both government aligned forces and insurgents has killed scores of people in recent weeks.