Haswiyeh Massacre

On January 15, 2012, a reported 100-106 people were killed in the farming town of Haswiyeh, near the central Syrian city of Homs. As the story was first announced by opposition sources via the world media, the massacre was of "whole families," including 32 from one specific (Sunni) family. Not surprisingly, the killers are reported as Alawites and Shi'ites from surrounding villages. For the first time, it's being alleged this is part of a strategy of creating an Alawite/Shi'ite/Christian breakaway state, purified of Sunnis in advance.

Starter Material
Telegraph: Families burnt and hacked to death in fresh Syria massacre By Ruth Sherlock, Antakya4:54PM GMT 17 Jan 2013
 * Syrian opposition sources from Homs said loyalist militiamen backed by government troops swept through the hamlet of Haswiyeh just north of the city, torching houses and slashing victims to death with knives.
 * The Britain-based opposition group the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said "whole families were executed", with one family losing up to 32 members, including women and children.

CNN heard a variation from, apparently, the Local Coordination Committees:
 * Anti-government activist Abu Rami told CNN that 13 families were killed in Homs. The alleged massacre occurred in the farming village of Husweyeh with a population of about 1,500. Rami said the families killed were Sunnis, suggesting that the killers were motivated by sect differences. Sunnis, Christians and Alawites in the village were spared, he said.
 * Rami feels that the lack of military action by the international community has given al-Assad "the green light...to do whatever to end" the uprising against him. Thousands of "Syrian souls" will pay for that, he said.

Telegraph: "Haswiyeh is not far from the region of Houla, where 108 people were killed over two days last May. The UN described the Houla killings as a war crime perpetrated by the government forces and shabiha militia backing Assad's regime." The town's proximity to Al-Houla, site of the Houla massacre is often mentioned as helping to suggest the government is responsible. Clicking that link might be instructive.

Sectarian Claims
The Telegraph reported:
 * Waleed al-Fares, an activist in the area said that most of the victims were Sunnis and that many of the attackers came from the nearby village of Mazraa, which he said is predominantly Shia.

CNN:
 * Rami said the families killed were Sunnis, suggesting that the killers were motivated by sect differences. Sunnis, Christians and Alawites in the village were spared, he said.

AP: Sweep of majority Sunni village could pave way for Alawite enclave
 * The opposition believes the mass killings that have occurred, mostly in overwhelmingly Sunni villages that lie near main routes into the Alawite sect's coastal strip, are meant to lay the groundwork for a breakaway enclave.

By combined implication, this breakaway state will not be just a greater Latakia for the Alawites, but for other Shia, Christians, and apparently everyone but Sunnis. But to get it, they need to liquidate the local Sunnis, in the same kind of fits and spurts country-based rebels could pull off, if they wanted. The implications are clearly troubling, and also troubling in less clear ways.