Headline : Fear of a reckoning simmers in Assads Alawite heartland

Read more from the original article on here at www.bbc.com.

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No. of Paragraph 42

Noor stands trembling in the chill afternoon light of the courtyard, not from the cold, but from fear.

Dressed in her thick winter coat, she has come to make a complaint to the men of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), Syria's new de-facto rulers, and the new law in town.

She begins to cry as she explains that three days earlier, just before nine in the evening, armed men had arrived in a black van at her apartment in an upscale neighbourhood of the city of Latakia. Along with her children and her husband, an army officer, she was forced out onto the street in her pyjamas. The leader of the armed men then moved his own family into her home.

Noor - not her real name - is Alawite, the minority sect from which the Assad family originates, and to which many of the former regime's political and military elite belonged. Alawites, whose sect is an offshoot of Shia Islam, make up around 10% of Syria's population, which is majority Sunni. Latakia, on Syria's north-west Mediterranean coast is their heartland.

Read more from the original article on here at www.bbc.com.

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