EU invites Syria’s HTS regime to Brussels after slaughter of Alawites

March 12, 2025 - 21:30

The European Commission has invited Syria’s Hay'at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) administration to an official conference in Brussels after the slaughter of hundreds of Alawites in the country's west.  

Anitta Hipper, the European Commission spokesperson, revealed at a daily press briefing that “an invite was sent” to HTS foreign minister Asaad al-Shaibani to attend the donor conference for Syria's new rulers on March 17, Press TV reported.

Titled “Standing with Syria: Meeting the Needs for a Successful Transition”, the donor conference – which the EU has been organizing annually since 2017 – is set to be the first held since the ouster of the Assad administration in December.

Hipper said the conference presents a “very important occasion” to engage with the new Syrian rulers.

HTS-led forces have over the past weeks perpetrated a vast array of massacres against minorities, especially Alawites, in the country’s northwestern coastal region.

A so-called Syrian war monitor says militants aligned with Syria’s HTS administration have killed nearly 1,000 civilians in recent days in the western coastal region.

More than 1,540 people, the majority of them civilians, have been killed so far in the violence in the provinces of Tartus, Latakia, Hama and Homs, according to the so-called Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR).

In harsh rebuke of the massacres by HTS-led forces, human rights groups as well as the international community have called for an immediate halt to ethnic cleansing and sectarian-based atrocities in Syria.

They have also called for the establishment of an independent international investigation committee under the UN’s direct oversight.

EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas on Tuesday stopped short of condemning the killings and defended the deeds of HTS militants. 

"It is very, very early to tell whether this goes to the right direction. The first signals are good, but we are not rushing into any kind of arrangements yet, if we don't have certainty,” she said. 

Kallas only expressed concern about the risks of sectarian violence in Syria and a resurgence of extremism in the Arab country.
 

Leave a Comment