Authored by Jason Ditz via AntiWar.com,

A Bedouin couple was killed Saturday in their home in the town of Zaidal, on the outskirts of Homs, Syria. The two were members of the Bani Khaled tribe, and state media reported that "sectarian slogans" were found at the scene.

The tribe responded by attacking the Alawite-heavy al-Muhajireen neighborhood in Homs, burning Alawite homes and shops and vandalizing cars while attacking locals. Two young Alawite men, who were reported missing, turned up at a nearby hospital killed under mysterious circumstances. Dozens have been reported wounded in the attacks.

Maj. Gen. Murhaf al-Nassan said that the attack in Zaidal appeared to be meant to undermine stability in the region, and the government has yet to identify who actually carried out the attack. The government declared a curfew in Homs in response to the violence.

One Syrian journalist noted that the claims of an Alawite attack on Zaidal weren’t plausible, because the Alawites have been disarmed and, in taking such visible credit for the attack, they would know that the retaliation would hit their community, as it indeed has.

The Alawites have been targeted repeatedly by other factions, and the government itself, with a high-profile massacre of Alawite civilians in the northwest of the country in March leading to low level violence against the religious minority ever since.

The scale of the violence is not yet known, as the government sent forces to the city to restore order, and imposed a curfew.

"Security personnel have been deployed in Alawite areas but the situation in Homs remains very sensitive," said a resident who works as a graphic designer and gave her name as Rawa. —The National

Alawites are around 10% of Syria’s population, and as former President Bashar al-Assad was an Alawite himself, they have been targets of opponents of the old regime, even though they note that under Assad they weren’t generally treated better than anyone else.

While the Islamist government has presented an idea of religious unity for Syria, they have also eagerly branded any clashes involving Alawites as “Assad remnant” forces, and reacted harshly, while plainly targeting the Alawites on a day-to-day basis.