When he arrived in the town of Masaoudiyeh in northern Lebanon earlier this month, fleeing massacres on Syria’s Mediterranean coast, Dhulfiqar Ali had escaped death not once but twice.
Advertisement
He is among thousands of Syrians who have fled across the border after armed groups descended on the Syrian coastal heartland of ousted president Bashar al-Assad’s Alawite minority and killed hundreds of civilians, mostly Alawites.
“They didn’t even speak Arabic … they knew only: ‘Alawites, pigs, kill them’,” Ali said of the gunmen.
A mobile phone shop owner who lived in an Alawite neighbourhood of Homs, Ali had already been attacked before, soon after Assad was toppled in a lightning offensive by Islamist-led rebels in December.
“They shot and killed my two brothers in front of me and they shot me and thought I was dead,” said the 47-year-old father of two, who now lives with his family at a school in Masaoudiyeh.
Advertisement
He escaped to the mountains near Latakia in January to receive treatment, only to be forced to flee again, this time across the border.
