How Reuters counted the dead in the March killings of Syrian Alawites

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LATAKIA, Syria -A Reuters investigation pieced together how the March 7-9 massacres of Syrian Alawites along the country’s Mediterranean coast unfolded, identifying a chain of command leading from the attackers directly to men who serve alongside Syria’s new leaders in Damascus.

The investigation found 1,479 Syrian Alawites were killed and dozens were missing from 40 distinct sites of revenge killings, rampages and looting against the religious minority, long associated with the Assad government. 

Reuters spoke with over 200 families of victims during visits to massacre sites and by phone, 40 security officials, fighters and commanders, and government-appointed investigators and mediators. Journalists for the news agency also reviewed messages from a Telegram chat established by a Defense Ministry official to coordinate the government response. Journalists examined dozens of videos, obtained CCTV footage and compiled handwritten lists of victims’ names. 

Reuters counted the dead by gathering local lists of names of victims, many of them handwritten, from community leaders and families of the victims. Villagers also gathered pictures and personal details about the victims. For each list, written in Arabic, Reuters cross-checked the names with activists who are either in the relevant village, run Facebook pages, or in the diaspora and have relatives in the places that came under attack.

For each massacre site, Reuters also gathered pictures of victims, and photos and locations of mass graves.

On March 11, the U.N. said it had counted 111 deaths but acknowledged it as an undercount. It hasn’t updated its death tally since. 

The most recent count from the Syrian Network for Human Rights, an independent monitoring group, shows 1,662 people killed. Of that total, 1,217 were killed by government forces and armed groups while 445 were killed by pro-Assad fighters, it said. Of the 445, SNHR said about half were civilians and half were government forces. SNHR did not explain how it confirmed the identity of the perpetrators. Reuters could not confirm the SNHR toll for Alawites killed by Assad loyalists or that for the government forces. 

On March 17, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, another civil society organization, said it had tallied 1,557 civilian deaths but did not detail how it arrived at the figure. The group also counted 273 dead among government forces and 259 among Alawite gunmen affiliated with pro-Assad forces.

President al-Sharaa has said 200 government forces died. The government has not released a tally of the dead among Alawite civilians.

(Reporting by Maggie Michael. Edited by Lori Hinnant.)