The defence ministry’s announcement comes after a surprise attack by gunmen from the Alawite community on a police patrol near the port city of Latakia on Thursday spiralled into widespread clashes across Syria’s coastal region, during which monitoring ...
Foreign ministers of Türkiye, Jordan, Iraq, Lebanon, and Syria met in Amman amid heightened violence in Syria’s coastal provinces - Anadolu Ajansı
More than 1,000 people have been killed in clashes in the coastal provinces of Syria, according to one war monitoring group.
The clashes raise concerns about Syria’s stability and interim president Ahmed al-Sharaa’s ability to reunify the country after 13 years of civil war.
Security forces were seen on the streets of Latakia on Saturday, March 8, amid reports that hundreds of members of the Alawite minortiy were killed. The UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) said 745 Alawites were killed in “30 massacres” as part of “an ethnic cleansing operation” on Friday and Saturday.
The attack Thursday near the port city of Latakia reopened the wounds of the country’s 13-year civil war and sparked the worst violence Syria has seen since December, when insurgents led by the Islamist group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, or HTS, overthrew Assad.
Syrian security forces battled for a second day on Friday to crush a nascent insurgency by fighters from Bashar al-Assad's Alawite sect, with scores reported killed as the Islamist-led government faced the biggest challenge yet to its authority.