Thousands of Alawites seek refuge in Lebanon, where locals lead the response

AL-MASSAOUDIYE — Sara (a pseudonym) wore a fuzzy rainbow jacket, her blue rubber sandals caked in thick mud as she trudged up the road from the river marking Lebanon’s northern border with Syria on Wednesday, two plastic bags of children’s clothes in her hands. 

The 24-year-old had just come from her home in the Syrian coastal city of Baniyas, roughly 60 kilometers to the north. After fleeing to Lebanon over the weekend, she returned this week to bring clothes to her five young daughters, who had been residing in a makeshift shelter in the northern Lebanese border village of al-Massaoudiye for several days. 

“I [travelled] under the attacks and the killing to bring clothes for our kids,” Sara told Syria Direct, asking to remain anonymous.

Violence erupted in Baniyas on March 7, the day after Assad loyalists ambushed a local patrol of security forces in a village outside Jableh, a city in Latakia, killing at least 13. Armed confrontations quickly spread throughout Syria’s coastal provinces, with pro-Assad fighters briefly taking control of some city centers. 

As the Syrian government called in reinforcements—a mixture of official security forces, factions recently integrated into the state and unaffiliated armed groups—sectarian killings took place in multiple villages and cities. Many of those killed were Alawites, members of the minority Shiite Muslim sect to which the family of deposed president Bashar al-Assad belongs.

On March 8, Sara and her husband, who are Alawite, quickly gathered what they could carry and fled with their daughters to neighboring Lebanon. 

Roughly 8,898 people are estimated to have fled Syria for Lebanon since March 6, United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR) Lebanon spokesperson Lisa Abou Khaled told Syria Direct on March 13. 

Most have arrived in 17 villages across Lebanon’s northern Akkar governorate, Abou Khaled added, with the small Alawite border villages of al-Massaoudiye and Tal al-Bireh hosting the highest number of arrivals, with 2,331 and 1,557 people, respectively. 

“Families, including female-headed households, are arriving traumatized from armed conflict and flight, with most arriving on foot across the border, through rivers and having travelled at night through insecure areas,” Abou Khaled said. 

The Syrian Network for Human Rights (SNHR), an independent human rights monitor, has documented the extrajudicial killing of at least 961 people across Latakia, Tartous, Hama and Homs since March 6. Forces affiliated with Damascus killed at least 529 civilians and “disarmed members of the remnants of the Assad regime,” it said, while pro-Assad fighters killed 207 members of government forces and 225 civilians.

Sectarian killings

“There was a massacre, and we had to flee,” Sara said. She spoke quickly, her voice shaking. “Just because you’re Alawite, they would come to slaughter you, your children, your spouse—everyone related to you,” she said. 

On March 7, Sara said that her neighbor and her six kids were sitting in their home around their sobia heater, warming themselves, when armed men broke in and killed them. “She and her six kids were slaughtered. Are these children remnants of the regime? Are they guilty? Are we guilty because we’re Alawite? What did we do?” she asked. 

The day after her neighbors were killed, Sara and her husband decided it was no longer safe to stay. “Everything around us was falling apart,” Sara said, describing the day they left. Armed men were rampaging around Baniyas, “killing people” and “driving around in cars yelling ‘Allahu Akbar, we came for you, Alawites,’” she recounted. 

A Tartous-based peacebuilding activist with the Karma Center for Human Rights, who is monitoring the attacks on the coast, confirmed the violence that broke out in Baniyas on March 7, as well as the rampages of armed men throughout the city. He could not confirm the specific case of the killing of the Sara’s neighbor and six children, but noted there were other similar incidents. The activist referenced one killing of a family of six in Baniyas that day, noting the victims had no military or security involvement in the past or at the time of their deaths.

Syria’s government has acknowledged that violations took place during its operations on the coast and promised accountability. The General Security Directorate announced the arrest of a number of individuals this week for “illegal and bloody acts” against civilians on the coast.

An independent fact-finding committee formed to look into the events began its work this week. Yasser Farhan, its spokesperson, emphasized “neutrality and objectivity” at a press conference in Damascus on Tuesday. 

“There’s no future left. My children can’t go to school, we’re living in a room filled with rubble,” Sara said. “The important thing is that we’re trying to stay strong, despite the situation.” Tears filled her eyes, and she turned to go, climbing onto the back of a waiting motorbike. 

Syrians fleeing violence cross into northern Lebanon, 12/3/2025 (Hanna Davis/Syria Direct)

Thousands cross into Lebanon 

By around 9:30 in the morning on March 12, men, women, and children began to line up on the Syrian side of the Nahr al-Kabir River near the Tal al-Bireh village, preparing to cross into Lebanon. Over the next hour, dozens of people removed their shoes and waded through the shallow water—babies, elderly and the disabled among them. They held their suitcases above their heads, or bags behind their backs, gripping their loved ones beside them. 

A few Syrian men stood by the river, guiding people across. “We are here to help, to help carry their bags and their children, ” Samer Hassan, 40, told Syria Direct. He left his village in Syria, near the Lebanese border, to help out at the river, where he had been for the past six days. 

Hassan estimated that around 10,000 people had fled into Lebanon. The day before Syria Direct’s visit, he estimated that roughly 2,000 people crossed. Most were women, children and elderly people heading for nearby Alawite border villages, he said. 

Many were fleeing Syria’s coast—where the violence was the most severe—but others came from the Hama and Homs provinces. Two young women wearing tightly wrapped blue and pink hijabs stepped barefoot onto the muddy Lebanese riverbank that morning. 

Ghufran, 25, who requested to go by her first name only, told Syria Direct they had fled the village of Khirbet al-Teen, in Homs’ western countryside. Her and her companion are Alawites, and do not usually wear the hijab. They put them on that morning to disguise themselves and not attract attention on the road, she said.

“There is no peace whatsoever, no one can step safely outside their home,” she said. “[In Homs] there have been killings and kidnappings against the Alawite sect, not like what happened on the coast, but we still have a lot of fear.” 

Kidnappings—many targeting Alawites—have surged in Homs since the Assad regime fell in December, Civil Peace Group, a Syrian civil society organization documenting the crimes, reported on February 12. At the time, the group had documented the kidnapping and disappearance of 64 people in Homs city, 19 of whom had been executed. 

Killings have also been reported in Homs countryside. In Fahel, a village in western Homs, armed forces that entered to search homes for former regime forces arrested villagers and killed 15 men, The National reported in early February. 

“We fear what’s happening on the coast will come to Homs,” Ghufran said. 

‘They’re all my relatives’ 

The bulk of support for the displaced come from family, friends and members of Lebanon’s Alawite community. “They’re all my relatives,” 51-year-old Sleiman Ismail, a Lebanese Alawite from the nearby village of al-Massaoudiye, told Syria Direct. “I’m helping people who have fled, taking them to shelter, and providing them with basic necessities, such as bedding and blankets, especially for women,” he said, standing beside the river. 

Sleiman Ismail, 51, waits on the Lebanese side of the Nahr al-Kabir river to help Syrians crossing into country, 12/3/2025 (Hanna Davis/Syria Direct)

Al-Massaoudiye was bustling when Syria Direct visited. Families shopped in small convenience stores, children played in the streets, and groups of friends gathered on porches, doorsteps and curbs, sipping coffee and smoking cigarettes. 

Local authorities in al-Massaoudiye opened two large collective shelter sites hosting approximately 1,500 people, UNHCR’s Abou Khaled said. Humanitarian partners, including the International Organization for Migration (IOM), Lebanese Red Cross, Doctors Without Borders (MSF) and UN agencies, were coordinating to provide bedding and hygiene supplies, ready-to-eat-meals and medical care, she added.

However, Ismail felt there had not been “any substantial” support from humanitarian agencies. “The assistance is just from the people, it hasn’t come from the UN,” he said. He also had low expectations for assistance from the Lebanese government. 

“The Alawite community has not received proper representation [in the Lebanese government],” he said, “We have been marginalized in government discussions.” Only “when Hezbollah was active” did the “Alawite community have a voice and representation in the state,” he added, saying that after the death of the late Hezbollah leader, Hassan Nasrallah, the Alawite and Shiite communities were “silenced.” 

The Lebanese army was not present at the border crossing when Syria Direct visited on Wednesday morning. Ismail said that for now “there was some tolerance” from the army: “They’re turning a blind eye because they know that people are under a lot of pressure and stress.” However, he was not sure how long their tolerance would hold. 

‘The numbers are rising hourly’

At his office in Jabal Mohsen, an Alawite-majority neighborhood of Lebanon’s northern coastal city of Tripoli, Sheikh Ahmad Asi spoke on the phone to a Lebanese army officer. Asi heads the office of the president of Lebanon’s Islamic Alawite Council, Sheikh Ali Khodr. 

On March 12, when Syria Direct visited, he was negotiating the release of a group of Syrians who had recently crossed into Lebanon who were set to be deported. They were stopped at the Deir Ammar checkpoint, on the Tripoli-Deir Ammar highway, where Syrians are often detained, he said.

“Currently, the Lebanese army is not cooperating with us,” Asi said. “If we don’t speak with [the officers] on the phone, they will return them to Syria. There needs to be a general directive for the Lebanese army to permit these individuals to enter Lebanon,” he stated. 

Asi has been making hundreds of calls a day to Lebanese army officers to prevent the deportation of recently arrived Syrians. “When they let them go back to Syria, they go back to death,” he said. 

Syria Direct reached out to a Lebanese army spokesperson on Friday but received no response by the time of publication. Late last December, Lebanon deported around 70 Syrian soldiers and officers who crossed into the country after Assad was overthrown. 

There have been allegations of figures affiliated with the deposed Assad regime moving back and forth across Lebanon’s porous northern border with Syria, which Syria Direct could not independently confirm. An open-source intelligence analysis by Syria TV this week found that Miqdad al-Fatiha, a former Republican Guard commander and a leading pro-Assad insurgency figure, posted videos on social media from both sides of the border in recent days. 

Sheikh Ahmad Asi in his office in Jabal Mohsen, an Alawite neighborhood in the Lebanese city of Tripoli, 12/3/2025 (Hanna Davis/Syria Direct)

The Jabal Mohsen neighborhood is home to the majority of Lebanon’s roughly 150,000 Alawites, Asi said. Some Lebanese Alawites also live in the Akkar governorate, in villages along the border, while about a fifth are “scattered throughout Lebanon,” he added. 

On his desk, a thick packet listed the names of Alawite families who had recently fled to Lebanon, and were residing in Jabal Mohsen. “There is a really big number of Alawites [who fled] here,” he said. To date, he said they had counted around 5,000 people living in Jabal Mohsen alone, from 1,500 different families. They had recorded 400 families residing in Akkar. 

“The numbers are rising hourly, not just daily,” Sheikh Asi said. He noted there were not enough homes to accommodate them in the small neighborhood, and so he had started finding shops to temporarily house them. 

Spillover of sectarian violence?

Jabal Mohsen has been spotlighted as a possible flashpoint where sectarian violence from Syria could spill over. Past years have seen deadly clashes break out between the Alawite-majority Jabal Mohsen and the adjacent Sunni-majority Bab al-Tabbaneh neighborhood, the buildings still scarred with bullet holes from recurring battles.

The eruption of the 2011 revolution in Syria reignited tensions between the two neighborhoods, pitting Jabal Mohsen residents largely supporting Bashar al-Assad against Bab al-Tabbaneh residents who did not. 

The events were “influenced by political factors, rather than sectarian ones,” Asi said, noting that roughly “20 rounds of violent clashes” broke out between Jabal Mohsen and neighboring areas. However, bouts of violence between the neighborhoods have been rare in recent years. 

This week, former Lebanese MP Fares Saeed expressed his fears to the Arabic-language television channel Al-Hurra that the arrival of Alawite Syrians in Tripoli could provoke renewed “sectarian fighting.” He said a meeting would be held on Friday to agree on a “Tripoli Declaration,” with the participation of Sunni, Shiite and Christian figures, “to affirm the preservation of civil peace and coexistence among all Lebanese sects.”

On the night of March 7, as sectarian violence erupted in Syria, angry protesters took to the streets in Tripoli after reports emerged that a Syrian minor from Idlib had been stabbed. After the news spread on social media, fingers were pointed at a young man from Jabal Mohsen. The situation escalated into gunfire, and Lebanese army units were deployed heavily between the two neighborhoods. The Alawite Islamic Council agreed to hand over the man accused to security forces, and the situation has since calmed, according to Asharq al-Awsat news, which cited Lebanon’s National News Agency. 

Days later, on the evening of Sunday, March 9, “Hezbollah loyalists” set fire to a Syrian refugee camp in the Aaqbiyeh area of Saida, southern Lebanon, according to posts on social media. Hassan Kotob, a Saida-based political analyst, told Syria Direct he spoke to a Syrian who witnessed the incident and confirmed the details of the post. He said the Hezbollah supporters came and accused the camp residents of having weapons, searched their phones and homes and proceeded to set six or seven tents on fire. 

The camp was housing Sunni Syrians, Kotob added. He noted that the event was “a reaction” to the sectarian violence on the Syrian coasts, fueled by charged social media posts stirring hate against “Islamists” in Syria. 

However, Sheikh Asi was not concerned about the outbreak of sectarian clashes. “We do not fear conflict because the international community is robust, the army is present and, regarding civil peace, the matter of community trust and sectarian tensions is being addressed,” he said, “Regarding our neighbors, the Sunnis, we are not afraid of them and we take refuge among them.”

An abandoned school converted to a makeshift shelter in the northern Lebanese border village of al-Massaoudiye, 12/3/2025 (Hanna Davis/Syria Direct)

‘We’re truly thankful’ 

Back in al-Massaoudiye village, Sara helped her mother-in-law prepare kousa mahshi—zucchini stuffed with rice—hours after crossing back over the river. Thirteen members of her family are sharing a small cinder block room at an abandoned school, packed to the brim with colorful mattresses and bags. 

The zucchini they prepared were donated by a local farmer in the village, Sara said. “I’m really grateful for everything we’ve received. Truly, I can’t thank everyone enough for the food, drinks and medical care,” she added. “We’re truly thankful for the families’ support.”

Samir Hussein, who fled the Hama village of Arza, helped turn the school into a shelter for more than 260 displaced people. Hussein said he had received some support from humanitarian organizations, including 160 mattresses and pillows from the Red Crescent, but most of the support came from the local community. 

Bedrieh Hassan Ayesh, Sara’s mother-in-law, prepares zucchini at the makeshift shelter the family is staying at in Lebanon’s northern al-Massaoudiye village, 12/3/2025 (Hanna Davis/Syria Direct)

Sara’s 60-year-old mother-in-law, Bedrieh Hassan Ayesh, spoke to Syria Direct as she hollowed out the zucchini. “Whether you were Bedouin, Alawite, or Halabi [from Aleppo], you were more than welcome in our house” in Baniyas, she said. “ We didn’t have this separation between one another.”

Ayesh blamed Syria’s new president, Ahmad al-Sharaa, for the eruption of sectarian violence. “Since day one, they’ve been asking for our weapons and killing us, they’ve killed sheikhs and children,” she said, moving her hand passionately as she spoke, “because we’re Alawites.”