At the bottom of Nisrine Ezzedine's garden, cement blocks mark the graves of her husband, son and nephew, all killed by foreign jihadists in Syria's Alawite minority heartland.

After Islamist-led rebels ousted longtime ruler Bashar al-Assad on December 8, the new authorities sought to reassure minorities in multi-ethnic multi-confessional Syria that they will be protected.

But Alawites, from a branch of Shiite Islam, have an acute fear of reprisals because of their connection to the Assad clan, which recruited from and favoured its own religious community for military and public sector positions during more than half a century of iron-fisted rule.

Ezzedine said foreign jihadists set up near the family olive groves, outside their mountain village of Ain al-Sharkia in the coastal province of Latakia, after Assad's ouster.

She said her civil servant husband Ammar, son Musa and her nephew Mohammed, both 17, were attacked there last month.

"Extremists -- masked foreigners -- riddled them with bullets," said Ezzedine, 48, her frail silhouette framed in a black coat.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights war monitor blamed "foreign Islamist fighters allied to Syria's new........

© Al Monitor