Hundreds of civilians killed by government forces in Syria, war monitors say

Aleppo, Syria: Three days of clashes between fighters affiliated with Syria's new leaders and those loyal to ousted dictator Bashar Assad have left scores of civilians dead, according to two war monitoring groups, who reported Saturday that many of them had been killed by the government's forces.

The British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which has monitored the Syrian conflict since 2011, said early Sunday that more than 1,000 people had been killed in the coastal provinces of Tartus and Latakia. That figure included about 700 civilians, most killed by government fighters. The information could not be independently verified.

Another monitoring group, the Syrian Network for Human Rights, reported that government security forces had killed some 125 civilians. It said that men of all ages were among the casualties and that the forces did not distinguish between civilians and combatants.

Information Ministry officials, responding to the charges of killing civilians, said they rejected "undocumented allegations accusing government forces of committing violations." But they also said the government was committed to conducting comprehensive investigations and would hold to account those found to have harmed civilians.

The observatory said most of the civilians killed were from the country's Alawite religious minority, to which Assad belongs, but this could not be independently verified. The monitoring group said scores of combatants on both sides of the conflict had also been killed.

The Syrian Network for Human Rights said the Assad loyalists had killed more than 100 security forces for the new government.

The Defense Ministry told Syrian state media Saturday afternoon that forces had regained control over most areas that had been taken by the former regime remnants and that roads leading to the coastal area had been closed "to regulate violations, prevent transgressions and gradually restore stability to the area."

The unrest has been the bloodiest outbreak of violence since the Assad regime was ousted in early December by rebels who became the country's new leaders. It presents a major test of the new government's authority and has raised the specter of a larger sectarian conflict in Syria, where tensions were already high as a result of the civil war.

By Saturday afternoon, the Syrian Red Crescent had been given permission to enter one of the towns where many had been wounded to evacuate the injured, said Haidera Younes, a spokesperson for the Red Crescent's branch in Tartus.