Sipping tea on an unusually warm February afternoon on his veranda that overlooked the small Alawite village of Arza, north-west Syria, Mohammed Abdullah al-Ismaili said he trusted the new Syrian authorities to keep him safe.
“We believe what [interim Syrian president Ahmed] al-Sharaa says, but the problem is these unknown groups,” the 62-year-old official in Arza’s municipality told the Guardian on 4 February, four days after a group of masked men raided the village at night and killed eight men on their knees. “The government says the killings are individual cases, it seems like they are unable to control the cases.”
