THE SLAUGHTER IN BANIYAS: MASSACRE OF ALAWITE CIVILIANS CONFIRMED
CONTENT WARNING: Graphic violence, war crimes, death of a child
There is a photo. A boy — small, lifeless, lying on the ground. His shirt is lifted. His wrists appear bound. There is blood near his head. His name, according to the person who posted it, is Ibrahim Shaheen. They say he was executed alongside six other Alawite civilians in Baniyas, Syria.
We can’t confirm the child’s identity — not yet. But we can confirm the massacre.
This isn’t rumor. This isn’t propaganda. This happened.
In early March 2025, in the Syrian coastal city of Baniyas, armed groups began going door to door. According to The Times (UK), survivors said they:
“would ask only one question — Alawite? A yes meant death.”
The paper confirmed that entire families were killed, and some bodies were dumped in wells.
Reuters independently confirmed the violence. One message sent from a resident during the killings read:
“Pray for us. They've arrived.”
Their reporting describes the attacks as “revenge killings” in the aftermath of Assad’s fall and corroborates that Alawite civilians were specifically targeted in Baniyas, Latakia, and Tartous beginning March 6.
The massacre is part of a broader collapse. When the Assad regime fell, it didn’t bring peace — it cracked Syria open. Old grievances rushed in. Militias filled the vacuum. The victims weren’t soldiers. They were neighbors.
We’re not publishing all of the images here. Not yet. Not until we can verify every pixel. But we’ve archived them. We’re investigating. Because if we don’t — if nobody does — these names, these families, this child, disappear.
It’s easy to write about war in abstract terms. “Clashes.” “Unrest.” “Sectarian violence.” What’s harder is staring at the body of a dead boy and saying: this is what it means. And what’s harder still is realizing no one else seems to be looking.
A reader sent us those photos — unprompted, unamplified — because they believed we might care. That we might say something when others stayed quiet. That responsibility sits heavily here.
The reader wrote:
“The new regime in Syria leaded by Aljolani made a new massacre in Bnnias and killed the child Ibrahim Shaheen and 6 other civilian Alawites. Plz help us we need an international protection...we are being eliminating like the Holocaust.”
The United Nations hasn’t formally addressed Baniyas. There have been no emergency sessions. No outcry loud enough to make the front page. But the truth is already out there — quietly reported, widely ignored.
“Some were beheaded. Others shot. Children were not spared.”
— Survivor testimony, The Times (UK), March 6, 2025
This is what we know. This is what is verified.
And this is still happening.
Sources:
The Times (UK) — “Massacre of Alawites shatters Syria’s fragile peace”
Reuters — “‘Pray for us. They've arrived’: How Syria descended into revenge bloodshed”
The amount of genocide in this world is just staggering. And we thought it could never happen here but it's starting. Who will save all these people?
Great care in knowing who the sources are with regard to Syria. The Syrian Network for Human Rights (SNHR) is considered more reliable than the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR), and it can get things wrong. The new transitional government has a major task on its hands because there are non-Syrian influences that would like to destabilize it, including Israel. I see Israel as one of the greater threats to Syria right now because of the history with the Assad family it has had for over 50 years.
To the degree that the former regime of Assad inflicted so much horror on all of the different religious and ethnic groups in Syria, I am amazed at how little terror is being perpetrated (e.g., no all out killing on a scale of India-Pakistan at the time of partition). I follow Charles Lister and his Syria Weekly posts available here on Substack for regular reports. He provides only the facts he confirms and doesn't speculate. I always ask the question, who benefits from the activities/violence. The pro-Assad partisans and others who benefited from Assad's patronage are the ones who are most triggered by his loss, as in "follow the money". Al-Shar'a has created a new government that my Syrian friends are very pleased with because he has picked many of the best people who survived the Assad regime. He shows great thought and wisdom. He doesn't have an enviable task ahead of him but he seems able to do it as well as one can expect.