The cries for revenge reached fever pitch on March 6.
Dozens of messages posted by various armed factions on social media, and shared with hundreds of thousands of Syrians, called for a "general mobilization" — or "al nafeer" — to help crush a fledgling insurgency by supporters of deposed and widely hated leader Bashar Assad.
Hundreds of pickup trucks full of fighters, as well as tanks and heavy weaponry, poured down major highways toward the coastal heartlands of the minority Alawite sect to which Assad belonged. They were seeking revenge against loyalists to the ousted president, mostly his Alawite former officers. Some of them had allegedly carried out a spate of hit-and-run attacks on the new military in an effort to stage a coup against the Sunni Islamist-led government.
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