Horror in Syria. thirty five people, mostly former officers of Bashar al-Assad’s army, were executed by summary procedures over the past three days in central Syria’s Homs province by fighters affiliated with the ruling Islamist coalition, according to the non-governmental Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

Many of the perpetrators were arrested. The new government accused on Friday the members of a “criminal group” who benefited from a “campaign to clean up illegals” to commit atrocities against the people of Homs. The official Syrian news agency Sana reported that the members of the group said they belonged to the “security services”.

According to the Syrian Observatory, the arrests came after extrajudicial executions of 35 people within 72 hours as well as “the humiliation of dozens of members of religious minorities”.

Most of the victims were former officers of the Assad regime who had gone to the special centers established by the new government to “regularize” their situation.

“Dozens of members of local armed groups belonging to the new ruling Sunni Islamist coalition and involved in security operations in villages in the north and west (of Homs) were arrested.” the Observatory reported. These groups “they retaliated and settled old scores with members of the Alawite community, from which Assad hails, taking advantage of the chaos and their proximity to the new authorities,” he added.

The non-governmental organization spoke of “arbitrary, mass arrests, attacks on religious symbols, mutilations of corpses, summary and brutal executions of civilians testifying to an unprecedented level of cruelty and violence.”

The new authorities have tried many times to reassure the minorities, assuring them that they will not be persecuted, but the Alawites fear reprisals, both for being a religious minority and for being from this community the Assad family comes from.