At least 70 people were killed and dozens wounded in overnight clashes between the new authorities in Syria and gunmen loyal to the ousted dictator Bashar al-Assad, a war monitor said, in the bloodiest skirmishes since the collapse of the Assad government.
The fighting unfolded in Latakia and Tartous provinces, longtime strongholds for Mr. al-Assad along Syria’s Mediterranean coast. It came hours after the killing of 16 security personnel by Assad loyalists in the Latakia countryside on Thursday afternoon, the deadliest attack yet on Syria’s new security forces.
Thousands of protesters flooded streets in the cities of Latakia and Tartous to demand that government forces stand down and withdraw from the countryside, the first wide-scale demonstrations against the new authorities since they assumed power in December.
The government deployed more security forces to the coast late Thursday night to restore order. On Friday morning, government convoys were patrolling the roads of both cities, and residents were told to stay home as security forces conducted “combing operations” aimed at armed remnants of the Assad regime, according to state media.
“Thousands have chosen to surrender their weapons and return to their families, while some insist on fleeing” justice and continuing to fight, a spokesman for the Syrian Ministry of Defense, Col. Hassan Abdul Ghani, told the state-run Syrian Arab News Agency. “The choice is clear: Lay down your weapons or face your inevitable fate,” he added.
The flaring tensions have become a critical test for Syria’s new leaders, whose rebel coalition toppled the Assad regime and installed an Islamist transitional government that has sought to consolidate control.
The coastal provinces have posed a significant challenge for the Sunni Muslim-led government as it exerts its authority. The region is the heartland of Syria’s Alawite minority, including the Assad family.
Despite making up only 10 percent of the country’s population, the Alawites exerted outsized influence over the country during the Assad family’s more than 50 year rule. The Alawites, who practice an offshoot of Shiite Islam, dominated the ruling class and upper ranks of the military under the Assad government.
Since seizing power, Syria’s new leaders have faced sporadic hit-and-run attacks on their forces in Latakia and Tartous by armed men affiliated with the Assad government.
The new government has called on all members of Mr. al-Assad’s security forces to relinquish their ties to the former government and surrender their weapons and vehicles to the new authorities at “reconciliation centers.”
The authorities have not promised blanket amnesty to those who do so, and many remnants of the former government have refused to take part in the process.
The overnight skirmishes came hours after security personnel conducted an operation in the Latakia countryside to arrest an official from the Assad government, according to a government official who asked not to be identified because he was not authorized to speak to the news media.
As the security forces left one village, Beit Aana, gunmen ambushed their convoy, said village residents and the official. At least 16 security personnel were killed, according to the war monitor, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.
The Beit Aana ambush sparked additional clashes between government forces and armed Assad loyalists in rural Latakia.
Artillery and machine-gun fire rang out across the area throughout the afternoon as hundreds of people from Beit Aana and nearby villages fled to the countryside, the residents said. It was not immediately clear whether any civilians or Assad loyalists had been killed.
As news of the clashes spread, protests erupted in major cities across Syria, some supporting the government and others demanding that its forces stand down on the coast.
In Tartous, a port city, protesters chanted, “One, one, one — Tartous and Jableh are one,” referring to the area, Jableh, where the clashes had unfolded, according to residents.
In other parts of the country, including the cities of Homs and Idlib, thousands of people joined protests to support the government. Some called for a crackdown on armed remnants of the Assad government.
The authorities imposed a curfew from 10 p.m. Thursday to 10 a.m. Friday in many major cities, according to the Syrian Arab News Agency.
By Friday morning, few people in Tartous and Latakia seemed to be venturing outside their homes as the security convoys patrolled the streets.
Reham Mourshed contributed reporting.
