“They cut out my son’s heart”: A village’s descent into terror

AL-RUSAFA, SYRIA — Saad’s son was one of more than 1,900 people massacred over a single weekend in Alawite communities. Terror went door to door, clearing out even children, elderly and disabled.

Rashid Saad, 55, wants the world to know what security forces loyal to Syria’s new government did to his son. Photo: Magda Gad

A thunderstorm is building over the coastal mountains, as if nature itself has chosen the backdrop for this story. Down in the valley, across the fields of Al-Rusafa, the wind cuts so cold that no one wants to be outside. The poor village, set between Tartus, Hama and Homs, is home to about 1,600 people, most of them Alawites – the esoteric religious minority to which the Assad family also belongs.

On the floor of a modest stone house, 54-year-old Ghada Ali sits feeding branches into the stove. The wood crackles cosily as it catches fire. She pours hot water over yerba mate and hands over a cup of the herbal tea, an important social tradition in this part of Syria. The power is out, and she sets the kettle back beside the gas cylinder.

Her husband, 55-year-old Rashid Saad, enters with a white scarf wrapped around his head, his hands numb with cold. He pulls me into a welcoming embrace and kisses me on both cheeks. Here, amid scarcity and warmth, lives a farming family whose life has been torn apart.

“The way they killed my son was brutal,” Rashid says.

Rashid and Ghada say they were so poor the jihadists did not even bother to loot their home. But poverty did not protect them from the violence that followed. Photo: Magda Gad

Among the most brutal in Syria’s history

Across Syria’s coastal region, massacres unfolded at around 40 locations in Alawite communities, in one of the most brutal waves of violence against civilians in the country’s modern history. For three days, over the weekend of 7–9 March 2025, the killings continued unchecked. Even afterwards, the violence did not fully stop. Low-level attacks have continued.

Security forces linked to Syria’s new transitional government emptied entire villages and wiped out whole families. Men, women, children, the elderly and people with disabilities were humiliated, tortured and executed. Skulls were crushed with metal pipes. Eyes were gouged out. Homes were set on fire. People were abducted and never returned alive.