🇸🇾 Amid Media Blackout: Entire Population of Arza Village Expelled Due to Alawite Identity

Jihadist Militants Seize Homes and Force Residents to Sign Ownership Transfer Contracts

📌The village of Arza in northern countryside witnessed two massacres that claimed the lives of 32 civilians, including three children and a woman, who were summarily executed on February 1st and March 7th of this year.

📌What happened in was not just a random attack, it amounts to a systematic sectarian cleansing operation, accompanied by home seizures and forced displacement of the local population, all under a media blackout.

📌Graves were desecrated, and religious shrines were vandalized, in what appears to be a deliberate effort to erase the cultural and sectarian identity of the village.

📌The seizure of civilian homes has become a systematic practice, reportedly occurring in neighboring villages as well, with no accountability or official investigations. According to sources, armed militants are taking over these homes by force and preventing the original owners from returning. If any former resident attempts to return and is detected by these militants, they are not allowed to leave alive unless they sign a lease, a sales contract, or some legal document relinquishing ownership.

📌Sources also reported that the identity documents of civilians who fled the village are being confiscated by the militants. These IDs are then used to present the militants as the rightful residents in case a fact-finding mission arrives, in an attempt to distort the truth and falsify the area’s demographic identity.

Source of the report: Syrian Observatory for Human Rights