When hundreds of residents of the postcard-pretty coastal Syrian village of Kassab fled this week, it bore historic weight: it was the third time since 1900 that ethnic Armenians there felt they had no choice but to run for their lives.
This time it was Syrian rebels storming into town.
It's a heavy blow for the minority community that sees the town as key to preserving the Armenians' identity in Syria.
Kassab‘‘is a symbol of Armenian history, language and continuity.
It's very symbolic,''said Ohannes Geukjian, a political science professor who writes on contemporary Armenian history and politics.‘‘And so the fall of Kassab, I consider it the defeat of Armenian identity in that area.''
Rebels seized control of Kassab on Sunday after launching an attack two days earlier in the coastal Syrian province of Latakia.
The fighters were from an array of conservative and Islamic groups, including the al-Qaida -affiliated Nusra Front.
The province has an ancient Armenian presence, but is better known as a bastion of support for President Bashar Assad .
It is his ancestral home and that of followers of the Alawite sect, an offshoot of the denomination of Shiism, that he belongs to.
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