Pro-Govt. “Syrian Resistance” Figure Boasts of Banias Operation

‘CLEANSING’ BANIAS: Pro-Assad Alawite militia leader, Ali Kayali, speaks of plans to “purify” the Banias coastal area. “Banias is these traitors’ only access to the sea,” he tells an audience of fighters, a Shiite cleric and some civilians. Activists say the unnamed militia leader participated in committing a massacre in the village of al-Beyda in Banias on Thursday.

“We must besiege Banias and begin to cleanse it,” Kayali says. The man identified as Kayali says that Banias as the only opposition stronghold in Tartus. SAS News cannot verify the authenticity or the date of this video. Other quotations include:

Banias is these traitors’ only access to the sea. Sooner or later, we must besiege Banias. We must besiege Banias, and I mean this. We must besiege Banias and begin to cleanse it. 

Our slogan at the Syrian Resistance is only to liberate and cleanse it. We don’t have any political agenda. So long as the state is there, they can handle authority. 

We will engage in battle in Banias this week, if this is what it takes to fulfill our national duties. 
Everyone will get to see how the Syrian Resistance battles.

UPDATE: On May 6, the Syrian Resistance published this statement in response to the outcry over the video:

“Monday May 6, 2013

The Al-Arabiya channel has published a clipped video that suits its Zionist masters and their clients inside. They stressed the word “purify” [in the video].

Our objective, in the Syrian Resistance, is to liberate and purify [Syria] from all the traitors, terrorists, and takfireen, such as Jabhat a-Nusra and those who sneaked through the border and turned Syrian lands into dens [strongholds] to base their systematic terror against our people, who’ve had more than 7,000 years of glory, civilization and national unity. The proof of that is that the leaders of the national liberation, from [both] the former colonialism and the new one, who fought to purify the land and force [colonists] out, came from the Syrian society’s varied backgrounds. The martyrs of May are the greatest proof of the Syrian unified and harmonious national texture.

The Syrian Resistance stresses, once again, that it’s for all Syrians and that it includes fighters from all the Syrian society’s backgrounds. What al-Arabiya channel has published is completely untrue, and promotes satanic destructive ideas. The Syrian Resistance has stressed many times, since the beginning of the conspiracy, that its objective is to liberate and purify means to purify the land from the invaders, traitors, and takfireen who came from all over the world to invade our country. [Our objective] is to force them out of our pure homeland.”