section_path: Violence and massacres/March/7 March
section_name: 7 March
paragraph_text: 7 March
  
  Beginning at approximately 8:00 a.m. AST on 7 March 2025, armed groups entered Alawite neighborhoods in Baniyas, a multi-faith coastal town in Tartus Governorate. According to eyewitness accounts provided to Le Monde, these groups included Syrian Ministry of Defense and General Security Service members from nearby regions in conjunction with fighters described as "foreigners", including individuals of purported Turkmen and Chechen origin. Multiple witnesses described systematic targeting of Alawite residents, with men being executed on rooftops and in streets. SOHR reported sixty people killed in Baniyas, including ten women and five children, marking one of the largest single massacres documented on 7 March.
  
  General Security entered the village of Beit Ana in search of wanted individuals but were attacked, after which ambulances transporting the dead and wounded security forces were also attacked. State media reported that militias loyal to Assad had opened fire on "members and equipment of the defence ministry" near Beit Ana, killing one security force member and wounding two. SOHR reported that in response there were "strikes launched by Syrian helicopters on armed men in the village of Beit Ana and the surrounding forests, coinciding with artillery strikes on a neighbouring village".
  
  Deutsche Welle reported that executions were carried out by fighters on both sides. Altogether, the Syrian Network for Human Rights (SNHR, described by The Guardian as "a human rights monitor considered independent and credible") said 125 civilians were killed over 6–7 March in the attacks, as well as 100 Syrian security forces and 15 civilians killed by Assadist groups. By the early hours of 8 March, SOHR said that thirty-eight civilians in Al-Mukhtariya had been killed, as well as twenty-four civilians in Al-Shir, twenty-two in Qurfays, seven in the Al-Haffah district, seven in Beit Ana and Dweir Baabda in the Jableh countryside, and two in Yahmur in the Tartus countryside, with SOHR attributing these to members of the Syrian Ministry of Defense and General Security Service forces firing squads. SOHR also reported that an Alawite sheikh, Shaaban Mansour, and his son were killed by a firing squad in a field execution in Salhab, Hama Governorate, by government security forces. Combined with the earlier report of sixty civilians killed in Baniyas, the SOHR claimed that at least 162 civilians were killed across five separate massacres on 7 March alone. Reports of widespread looting of businesses and residences by unidentified individuals taking advantage of the ongoing lack of security were noted by the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights.
  
  Al Jazeera English reported that its photographer Riad al-Hussein was wounded in the clashes but that his condition was stable.
  
  SNHR attributed the abuses by government-aligned fighters to "factions from the North" (i.e. SNA units), and civilians who took up arms in revenge attacks, and called for a full investigation as well as compensation to victims' families.
  
  Syrian authorities implemented curfews in the cities Tartus and Latakia along the Syrian coast, and in the city of Homs. Authorities blamed widespread power outages on "sabotage". President al-Sharaa commented on the violence in coastal provinces, stating that the era of forgiveness and amnesty had ended and the era of "purification" and "liberation" had begun, while urging security forces to protect civilians. Syria's interior ministry said some "individual violations" were by civilians and militias carrying out reprisals for attacks by Assadist groups. The ministry said "We are working to put a stop to these violations that do not represent the Syrian people as a whole." The official Telegram channel for the Military Operations Command announced that roughly a half million million fighters were sent to the region to break the "Nusayri rebellion", with Nusayri being used as a derogatory term against Alawites.