Nearly a dozen Alawite civilians have been found tortured to death in prison or executed in recent days in Homs governorate.

Homs Governorate in Syria is experiencing a surge in sectarian murders and deaths from torture of prisoners, according to reports from Syrian rights groups.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) reported several cases of Alawites murdered in Homs in recent days.

Shortly after midnight on 25 April, unidentified gunmen stormed a house on Al-Zeir Street in the Karm al-Zeitoun neighborhood of Homs, killing an Alawite man, Alaa Nasr, and his brother, Hussein Nasr, before dumping their bodies in the street.

On 24 April, the body of a civilian from the village of Habran in Suwayda Governorate was found inside an abandoned house near the Dabaa military airport in the Homs countryside. He had been shot several times while attempting to cross into Lebanon. The body of another unidentified person was found next to him.

A university student, Mohammad Saeed al-Waari, was also killed hours after his arrest today when a General Security patrol raided his home in the Karm al-Loz neighborhood. According to sources, his body was found murdered at the city’s Al-Nahda Hospital.

The Syrian Coast Monitor reported that in a voice recording, Waari’s mother announced her son’s death and said: “They took him and shot him in the head. How could they do that? How could they look him in the face, a college student, and then shoot him in the head?”

The Syrian Coast Monitor stated that in another incident, an armed group affiliated with the HTS-led General Security stormed the Alawite-majority neighborhood of Ash al-Warwar in Damascus on the evening of 25 April. They entered the area’s new local council and executed the young men gathered inside, resulting in the deaths of four Alawite men: Ali Hussein Khalouf, Diab Salloum, Shuaib Youssef, and Ahmed Mahrez.

In another case, Mahmoud Hamed Deeb, an engineer and university professor, was shot and killed by members of the General Security in the town of Kafraya, south of Homs.

According to the Syrian Coast Monitor, Deeb was lured to the town on 23 April after being asked to conduct a geological survey for a planned well-drilling site. He lost contact shortly after arriving, and his body was discovered the following day.

Deeb was a faculty member at the University of Homs’s College of Science and had an Alawite background.

SOHR reported further that three young men from the western Homs countryside were found tortured to death on 24 April in Damascus government prisons after being arrested during security campaigns earlier this year.

The first young man was arrested between 21 and 23 January in the village of Tarin, and his body was found murdered and dumped near the Houla Dam in the Homs countryside.

The bodies of two brothers from the village of Khirbet al-Hamam were found on 25 April in Al-Waer Hospital in Homs.  They were arrested on 22 January during a similar security campaign.

“These crimes, which coincided in timing and varied in their methods, raise growing concerns about a dangerous security escalation, particularly with the increasing incidence of targeted killings, amid a complete lack of judicial oversight and accountability for the conditions of detainees in the regime’s prisons,” SOHR warned.

On 7 March, gunmen affiliated with the Syrian government descended on the coastal regions of Syria, massacring over 2,200 Alawite civilians. Gunmen affiliated with the Ministry of Defense and General Security went door to door in Alawite neighborhoods and villages, executing all fighting-aged men, as well as some women, the elderly, and children. The gunmen also looted and burned homes.

The Cradle Media report