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For Malak, like so many Syrians, the fall of Assad was not just a day of joy, but of hope.

Mohammed was still a teenager when he was conscripted into Assad's army, as the demonstrations spread and the regime's deadly crackdown sparked a full-blown war.

It's for his little brother, killed in a bomb attack by President Assad's former army in 2018 as his family sat down at home to break their Ramadan fast.

Those attacks resurrected deep-seated anger over the repressive dictatorship of former President Assad, with Alawite civilians seen by some as complicit in the crimes of his regime - and as part of the insurgency that followed his fall.

The survivor who watched gunmen kill her father and brother said the family showed their killers the men's civilian ID cards to prove they hadn't been part of Assad's army.