New details of atrocities carried out by Islamist rebel
fighters in the town of Adra, 20 kilometers north of
Damascus, continue to pour in from survivors of the
massacre there, in which reportedly at least 80 people lost
their lives.
"The decapitators" is how the Adra residents, who managed to flee the violence there, now call
the people who currently have the town under their control. Adra, a town with a population of
20,000, was captured by Islamist rebels from the Al-Nusra front and the Army of Islam last
week, following fierce fighting with the government forces. The town’s seizure was
accompanied by mass executions of civilians.
RT Arabic has managed to speak to some of the eyewitnesses of the atrocities. Most of them
have fled the town, leaving their relatives and friends behind, so they asked not to be
identified in the report for security reasons.
An Adra resident said he escaped from the town “ under a storm of bullets.” He later contacted
his colleagues, who described how the executions of civilians were carried out by the
militants.
“They had lists of government employees on them,” the man told RT. “ This means they had
planned for it beforehand and knew who works in the governmental agencies. They went to
the addresses they had on their list, forced the people out and subjected them to the so-
called “Sharia trials .” I think that’s what they call it. They sentenced them to death by
beheading. ”
A woman, hiding her face from the camera, told RT of the beheadings she had seen.
“There was slaughter everywhere ,” she said. “ The eldest was only 20 years old; he was
slaughtered. They were all children. I saw them with my own eyes. They killed fourteen people
with a machete. I don’t know if these people were Alawites. I don’t know why they were
slaughtered. They grabbed them by their heads and slaughtered them like sheep .”
It’s been reported that 80 civilians were killed in the massacre. The death toll could still grow,
as currently the information coming from Adra is scarce. The town has been surrounded and
isolated by the Syrian army, who have been trying to force the extremists out.
“Civilians told us that the workers of an Adra bakery were all executed and burned during the
first hours of the attack. Whole families were massacred. We do not have an exact estimation of
the number because we are unable to get into the town, but the number is high, ” Kinda
Shimat, Syria’s Social Affairs Minister, told RT.
Details of the executions are trickling out of the town as eyewitnesses tell their stories.
“They killed everyone at the Adra Ummalia police station ,” another fugitive from the town told
RT. “ And they killed everyone at the Adra Ummalia hospital where my sister works. She stayed
alive only because she didn’t show up for work that day. There are about 200 people at the
police station. They are civilians. The militants are hiding among them, using them as a shield
to prevent the Army from bombing the police. ”
The events in Adra are a further example of the shift that has taken place within the Syrian
Qrebel forces which has lately been dominated by Islamist extremists, according to Michel
Chossudovsky, director of the Centre for Research on Globalization.
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