Beirut // Al Qaeda fighters and their allies shot dead 19 civilians from president Bashar Al Assad’s Alawite minority in their own homes after seizing their village in central Syria, a monitor said on Friday.
Other villagers were kidnapped following the assault in which eight pro-regime militiamen were killed trying to defend Zaara in Hama province, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.
“During the attack, they entered houses and opened fire on families, killing at least 19 civilians, including six women,” Observatory chief Rami Abdel Rahman said.
Government forces trying to re-take the Alawite village have used air strikes and barrel bombs. The government and their allies were still fighting insurgents nearby, the Observatory said.
The state news agency Sana condemned the “massacre” of villagers in Hama, which like neighbouring Homs province is mainly Sunni but has a significant Alawite minority.
“Terrorist groups infiltrated Al Zaara and carried out a massacre as well as destruction and pillage,” it reported.
The five-year civil war in Syria has enflamed sectarian resentment between the country’s Sunni majority and the Alawite minority that is the main prop of the Assad regime.
The Alawites – followers of an offshoot of Shiite Islam who are mainly concentrated in the Mediterranean coastal provinces of Latakia and Tartus – are despised as heretics by the Sunni extremists of Al Qaeda.
Syrian state TV broadcast interviews with men and children who had fled the attack. They said rebels killed women, children and elderly people, slaughtered livestock and destroyed houses as they attacked.
The Observatory said the insurgent attack was part of an assault they called “revenge for Aleppo”, a reference to the northern city where an escalation of violence by both government-aligned forces and rebels killed scores of people in recent weeks.
The fighting in Aleppo and other areas ended weeks of relative calm under a nationwide ceasefire agreement brokered by the United States and Russia that had largely held since Febuary 27.
The agreement excluded extremist groups such as Al Qaeda and ISIL, which has seized large areas of Syria and Iraq.
Belgium on Friday said it would extend its F-16 air strikes against ISIL in Iraq into Syria as part of a US-led coalition against the extremist group.
A spokesman for prime minister Charles Michel did not spell out the reason for the change in policy but it comes as Belgium is still reeling from the ISIL suicide bomber attacks at Brussels airport and on the metro on March 22 which killed 32 people.
The Brussels attacks and those in Paris in November last year have both been linked to the same extremist cell with links to ISIL in Syria.
Also on Friday, the US secretary of state John Kerry headed to Saudi Arabia for a week of talks to try to end the crises in Syria and Libya.
After meeting senior Saudi leaders in Jeddah, Mr Kerry will fly on Monday to Vienna where he will co-host international meetings on the two conflicts.
On Wednesday he will fly on to Brussels for the Nato foreign ministers’ meeting and talks on the full range of challenges facing the western allies.
Mr Kerry’s spokesman John Kirby said the secretary of state and Italian foreign minister Paolo Gentiloni would jointly host the Libya crisis meeting to discuss international support for the country’s new unity government.
Libya’s new UN-backed government has been set up to unite the fractured country and fight ISIL, but it is still a work in progress.
Officials say the fledgling regime is drawing up a list of requests for western partners to assist its forces with arms, training and intelligence.
After the Libya meeting, Mr Kerry and Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov will lead a meeting of the 17-nation International Syria Support Group.
Mr Kirby said the goal was to “ensure humanitarian access throughout the country, and to expedite a negotiated political transition in Syria”.
The ISSG, under Mr Kerry and Mr Lavrov, is pushing the Assad regime and a coalition of opposition groups to respect a shaky truce.
Officials hope next week’s meeting will inject new life into the peace process and – if the ceasefire holds – secure talks on forming a unity government.
* Agence France-Presse and Reuters