Syria's Sharaa grants three-month extension to committee probing coastal killings

Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa has extended a deadline for a fact-finding committee to produce its report on the killings of Alawites on Syria's coast last month, the deadliest episode of sectarian violence since Sunni Islamist rebels seized power.

Hundreds of Alawites were killed in Syria's western coastal region in early March in apparent retribution for a deadly ambush on Syria's new security forces by armed loyalists to toppled Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, an Alawite.

On March 9, Sharaa tasked a fact-finding committee with producing a report within 30 days that would help determine the perpetrators and hold them to account. When asked by Reuters if fighters from his defense ministry were involved in the killings, he said it was up to the committee to find evidence.

In a decree published late on Thursday, Sharaa said the committee had requested more time to complete its work and that he would grant it a non-renewable three-month extension.

The committee has said no one would be above the law and that perpetrators would be held to account by the judiciary. Its spokesman Yasser Farhan told reporters last month its members had interviewed witnesses in several coastal districts and had two more cities there to visit.



Reuters