Syria's interim President Ahmed Sharaa said mass killings of members of ousted President Bashar al-Assad's minority sect were a threat to his mission to unite the country, and promised to punish those responsible,

Ahmed Hussein al-Sharaa was born in October 1982 in Saudi Arabia, where he spent the first seven years of his life. In a rare photograph of him as a child, found in a dossier compiled by Assad’s intelligence services, Sharaa has the same unsmiling, enigmatic expression he is often seen wearing today.

Fighting between security forces and pro-Assad militants is worst in years; death toll, mostly of Alawites, considered among highest in Syria since 2013 chemical weapon attack