A series of bomb attacks on a Syrian village mainly inhabited by members of President Bashar al-Assad’s Alawi minority on Tuesday left over 125 civilians dead, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.
The UK-based human rights watchdog said the bombings struck the village of Aqrab in Syria’s Hama province on Tuesday but they was unable to give an exact death toll or say who was responsible for the attack.
"The rebels took over a checkpoint near Aqrab just over a week ago," Observatory director, Rami Abdel Rahman, told AFP.
"We cannot know whether the rebels were behind this attack, but if they were, this would be the largest-scale revenge attack against Alawis," he said.
According to Israeli news portal Ynet, other activists have blamed Assad's forces for the attack, which they said involved the shelling of a house in which at least 200 Alawis were hiding.
Rahman told AFP that the Observatory is calling for “the establishment of an independent commission of jurists who can investigate the attack.”
