For the third consecutive day, Alawite residents of the Al-Sumaria neighborhood in Damascus are under siege and facing the threat of forced eviction from their homes by Jolani’s Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham terrorists.

According to local sources speaking with Syrian journalist Scharo Maroof on 29 August, authorities in Damascus have issued a 72-hour deadline for Alawite residents of the neighborhood to vacate their homes. Around 100 families have already left the neighborhood, fearing legal and physical repercussions.

Syrian authorities [Jolani’s Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham terrorists] launched a security campaign in Al-Sumaria on 27 August, stating it was necessary to review residents’ documents that confirm the ownership of their homes and to conduct a census of residents within the neighborhood, Al-Akhbar reported.

The authorities [Jolani’s Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham terrorists] said the internal security forces had arrested several residents, without providing additional details.

According to US academic Joshua Landis, a group of 600 armed men wearing masks entered the neighborhood on 27 August and started to beat men, women, and children violently.

They arrested up to 100 men and ordered residents to leave within 48 hours while threatening to use bulldozers to destroy homes over the heads of those who refused. They insulted residents, calling them “Alawite pigs” and the women “whores,” Landis added.

The armed forces also locked up about 400 men and boys, including a 10-year-old child and the local mukhtar (neighborhood head), in a residential building, beating them and yelling sectarian insults at them.

“This is an ethnic cleansing of potentially thousands of people taking place now,” he stated.

A source from Al-Sumaria speaking with The Cradle stated that General Security forces are marking Alawite homes with an “X” and homes of other sects with an “O” in preparation to expel Alawite families.

The source added that the armed men who entered were carrying swords and physically assaulting women.

Al-Akhbar added that the recent events in Al-Sumaria have raised concerns among residents in other areas of Damascus, including Mezzeh 86, Ash al-Warwar, Al-Amin Street, and Zein al-Abidin, as well as Jaramana and Sahnaya, which are inhabited by Alawite, Shia, and Druze minorities.

A source in Al-Sumaria speaking with Al-Akhbar said that the sectarian slogans chanted by the armed men when evicting residents from their homes suggest the government is trying to get rid of Syrian minorities living in the capital.

Syria’s new government, led by interim President Ahmad al-Sharaa, a former Al-Qaeda commander, has persecuted the country’s Alawite religious minority since coming to power in December.

The armed extremist group founded by Sharaa, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), promotes the ideology of medieval religious scholar Ibn Taymiyyah, claiming that Alawites are apostates from Islam and deserve to be killed. Syrian security forces and allied factions loyal to Sharaa massacred at least 1,600 Alawite civilians in the coastal regions of the country in March.

Some Alawites in Damascus were also killed during the massacres in March, including in the Qadam and Waroud neighborhoods.

The Cradle Media report