ERBIL, Kurdistan Region of Iraq - Human Rights Watch (HRW) and Syrian civil society organizations on Tuesday called on the Syrian government to take responsibility for grave human rights violations committed during March’s deadly violence in the Alawite-majority west coast, stressing that the violations “likely amount to war crimes.”

Violent clashes broke out in early March between Syrian security forces and loyalists of ousted former President Bashar al-Assad along the western coast of the country after 16 security personnel were killed in an ambush by pro-Assad militants.

The incident prompted a violent retaliatory spree from the security forces which was widely condemned by regional and international states and bodies. At least 1,400, mostly Alawite civilians, were killed in the violence, according to verified figures. 

A report titled “Are you Alawi?” by the HRW and civil society groups Syrians for Truth and Justice and Syrian Archive called on Damascus to hold accountability for the violence and ensure justice for the victims. 

“In many cases, they [government forces] moved house-to-house, demanding to know residents’ sect, looting valuables, torching homes, and executing children, women, and men, including older people, often using overtly anti-Alawi slurs and rhetoric. In some places, fighters wiped out entire families,” the report said. 

The organizations documented several forms of abuse carried out by government and government-affiliated forces, stressing that the violence represented a “centrally coordinated military operation overseen by the Ministry of Defense.”

According to the report, the main objective of the attacks was “to punish Alawi communities collectively, regardless of individual guilt or innocence.”

Syria’s western coastal region is heavily populated by members of the Alawite minority - an ethnoreligious group to which the Assad family belongs, and which enjoyed certain privileges under the rule of the ousted president.

“Justice in Syria cannot be delayed,” the report argued, stating that the efforts for accountability should go hand-in-hand with “the crimes of the Assad era.”

It warned that the delay in holding individuals responsible for their crimes will risk Syria entering into “a new cycle of impunity and sectarian violence.”