Syria Remains Unsettled
By 
Some heavy fighting this weekend:
Overall, the campaign by the anti-government forces seems to have been fairly well planned.
A video released by one former Assad regime officer shortly after the offensive began described it as Operation Coastal Shield. He also called upon Syria’s various sects to rise against the government in Damascus.
The coastal region is the main stronghold of Syria’s Alawite minority, to which the Assad family belongs. The region has also been traditionally strongly pro-Assad. Since the fall of the former leader’s regime, Alawite activists have said that their community has been subjected to violence and attacks, especially in rural Homs and Latakia.
And from the files of Meet the New Boss, Same as the Old Boss:
According to the U.K.-based Syrian Network for Human Rights (SNHR), around 125 civilians have been executed by government security forces in northwest Syria over the past two days. This is part of a larger total — around 240 people — who have been killed in the same period, including 100 Syrian security forces and 15 civilians at the hands of Assad loyalists. Many more have been injured.
The SNHR documented “large-scale field executions of men and young adults, without any clear distinction between civilians and combatants,” in northwest Syria.