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. "They were ambushed by some radical extremists -- masked foreigners - they started shooting at them, they riddled them with bullets," says the 48-year-old. Although Syria's new authorities have sought to reassure minorities in the multi-ethnic multi-confessional country that they will be protected, Alawites still fear reprisals because of their connection to the clan of ousted longtime ruler Bashar al-Assad. IMAGES AND SOUNDBITES