ERBIL, Kurdistan Region of Iraq - The United Nations Assistance Mission for Iraq (UNAMI) on Thursday expressed “grave concern” over the attacks on Syrian workers in Iraq, describing it as an infringement on human dignity.

A video by an Iraqi Shiite militia calling itself the “Ya Ali Popular Formations” circulated on social media on Tuesday, depicting masked members of the group harassing Syrian refugees working in a bakery in Iraq and physically assaulting them.

“Reports circulating of attacks against Syrian workers in Iraq are of grave concern to the United Nations Assistance Mission for Iraq (UNAMI),” said the mission in a statement on Thursday.

The mission commended the efforts of Iraqi authorities to pursue the perpetrators of the attacks, which it said, “infringe on human dignity as well as human rights and violate the applicable Iraqi laws.”

Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed Shia' al-Sudani on Wednesday ordered the formation of a specialized security team to pursue those responsible for the “heinous acts of violence” against Syrian workers.

UNAMI “calls on all to abide by the law, exercise wisdom, stay away from hate speech and maintain stability within a secure Iraq that is reconciled with itself and its surrounding,” the statement concluded.

The footage coincided with a violent killing spree in Syria by individuals affiliated with the new Damascus authorities, targeting those accused of being loyalists of the previous regime. Nearly 1,400 civilians, mostly Alawites, have been killed in Syria’s coastal areas over the past week, according to Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR), a UK-based war monitor.

The Alawites are an ethnoreligious minority group closely associated with the Assad family.