On Sunday, terrorist group Al-Nusra Front claimed responsibility for Tuesday’s attacks in which at least 30 Alawites, including several women, children and elderly men, were shot dead in cold blood.

Al-Nusra said in an internet statement that its militants entered the villages of Massudiyeh, Maksar al-Hissan and Jab al-Jerah in Homs province and carried out the massacre.

The group said one of its jurists asked them to slay Alawites whom he called "enemies of God".

"… this was the first time these villages were entered and such a high number was killed," it added.

Last month, Abu Mohammad al-Golani, a commander of al-Nusra, threatened to target Alawites with rockets.

"On top of that we will prepare a thousand rockets that will be fired on their towns in revenge for the Damascus Ghouta massacre," he said in an audio recording posted on YouTube on August 25.

Many Syrians who used to support the opposition at the start of the insurgency in Syria have turned to support the Syrian army after they saw their country was threatened by infiltration of terrorist groups.

People have been witnessing brutal scenes of killing and torture in some areas of the country which have been occupied and controlled by anti-Syria groups.

As the Syrian government is struggling with internal and external threats of wider conflicts, people have been forced to live under strict rules imposed by some of the militant groups who benefit international silence on their crimes.

A US plan to bomb the country over a chemical attack near Syrian capital on August 21 was canceled with Russia’s mediation that sought to ease the tensions by putting Syria’s stockpile of chemical weapons under international control.

The offer was widely welcomed both in Syria and other countries that were concerned by US military ambitions and its regional consequences.

SHI/SHI