Israeli FM Sa’ar: Europe must 'wake up, raise its voice' against Syria massacre, as death toll rises to over 1,300

Israel's leadership repeatedly called on the world to recognize the new Syrian government as a jihadist terror regime and to cut ties with it, as the number of people killed in Syria in the past days has risen to over 1,300, most of them being civilians.

Reports of clashes between government troops and Assadist loyalist militants have continued to emerge from Syria’s coastal provinces, which are mainly populated by Alawites but also by other minorities, including Christians.

On the fourth day of the clashes, the pace of fighting slowed in the region’s main cities, but government troops continued to hunt Assadist insurgents in the nearby mountain areas, a Syrian security source told Reuters.

“Over the weekend, the masks were removed when Jolani’s men mercilessly massacred their own people, citizens of ‘New Syria’,” Israel’s Foreign Minister Gideon Sa'ar charged in an interview with the German daily Bild.

The Assad regime collapsed under the onslaught of an alliance of rebel groups led by the Islamist Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) last December.

Soon after, Israel took an aggressive public stance against the new government headed by HTS leader Abu Mohammed al-Jolani, destroying nearly all of the country's heavy military equipment and capturing a buffer zone in Syrian territory as a precaution.

On Sunday, the IDF’s new Chief of Staff, Lt.-Gen. Eyal Zamir, inspected the Israeli positions in the buffer zone and conducted a situational assessment with the military’s top brass in the area.

The IDF comptroller also conducted inspections to assess the Northern Command's readiness, discipline, and operational routine.

Sa’ar continued, “Those who led an Islamist regime in the Idlib enclave are the same people even after they seized more territories by force, including the capital, Damascus. They sufficed with lip service about ‘inclusivity’ toward Syria's various minorities.”

HTS had ruled a small enclave centered on the city of Idlib before breaking out and capturing the capital in a lightning offensive. Al-Jolani then cast off his nom de guerre and has since been using his birth name, Ahmed al-Sharaa.

“The international community in general, and Europe in particular, has made a pilgrimage to Damascus in recent months to shake hands with Jolani (al-Sharaa). But Jolani and his men were jihadists and remain jihadists, even if they have donned suits,” Sa’ar continued.

“Europe must not fail to read the reality correctly. It must wake up. It must refrain from continuing to grant legitimacy to a regime whose first—and not entirely surprising—actions, given its well-known terrorist background, are these. First and foremost, it must raise its voice against the massacre, against the barbaric murder of civilians, against this distilled evil of the jihadists,” Sa’ar concluded.

Meanwhile, President al-Sharaa on Sunday renewed his call for “national unity and domestic peace” and vowed to establish a “National Independent Committee for Investigation and Fact-Finding” to investigate abuses.

The fighting had escalated after al-Sharaa’s troops stationed in the Alawite-majority coastal region were ambushed and besieged by a local insurgency of remnants of the Assad regime. The Assad clan hails from the coast and most key positions in the regime were held by ethnic Alawites.

When the insurgency began, the new government reportedly called for a general mobilization of its troops, which are based on the former rebel alliance mainly made up of Islamist and Jihadist groups, and have not fully been integrated into a new army.

In addition, many other remaining terror groups reportedly followed the call, leading thousands to descend upon the coast.

There, Alawite and Christian civilians, including women and children, have been hunted, abused, tortured and murdered during the past days in a frenzy motivated by Islamist ideology and revenge for the abuses of the Assad regime.

According to the widely cited Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a war monitor of unclear funding and allegiance based in the UK, over 1,300 people have been killed so far.

This number includes 830 civilians, and 481 members of the Syrian security forces and insurgents.