Over 140 killed in clashes between Syrian forces and Assad loyalists

Damascus (Syria): Clashes between Syria's new authorities and gunmen loyal to ousted dictator Bashar Assad have killed at least 147 people over the past two days, a war monitor said Friday, in the bloodiest fighting since the collapse of the old regime.

The troubles erupted across Latakia and Tartus provinces, longtime strongholds of Assad along Syria's Mediterranean coast. The area has become a tinderbox since Assad was overthrown in early December.

The clashes began Thursday afternoon, after Assad loyalists killed 16 security personnel for the government in the Latakia countryside, the deadliest attack yet on Syria's new security forces, according to government officials and the British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which has monitored the Syria civil war.

The government responded in force, deploying scores of security personnel in the countryside and directing thousands more from other cities to the coast as it tried to reestablish authority over a few towns and villages where armed gunmen had effectively seized control overnight.

By Friday afternoon, Syrian authorities still had not wrested back full control over some areas, raising the specter that the new government could lose control over the coast.

Armed Assad loyalists were also holding several security personnel hostage in Jableh, a coastal city in Latakia province where they had effectively seized control, according to Nour al-Din Primo, a spokesperson for the government in Latakia.

It was not immediately clear how many of those killed were fighters from one side or the other, or whether some were civilians.

One video, verified by Reuters and The New York Times, shows the bodies of at least 20 people who appear to have been shot in the Alawite village of Al-Mukhtaria, about 12 miles east of the provincial capital of Latakia. Blood can be seen around several bodies, as mourners wail over them.

The fighting on the coast has become a flashpoint for the fractious nation as it emerges from a nearly 14-year civil war and more than 50 years under Assad family dictatorships. The flaring tensions have become a critical test for the new leaders, whose rebel coalition toppled Assad and installed an Islamist transitional government that has sought to consolidate control.

"From the very first day, we have been and continue to face both a covert and open war aimed at breaking the will of the Syrian people," Syria's interim foreign minister, Asaad al-Shaibani, said in a post on the social platform X on Friday.

The war has been fought by "sowing chaos on one hand, and attempting political isolation abroad on the other," he added. "I reassure our people that Syria today has passed the test once again and is forging a way toward the future with strength and determination."

Most residents in Tartus and Latakia were sheltering in their homes Friday, as military convoys patrolled the streets and security forces conducted "combing operations" to root out armed remnants of the Assad era, according to the state news media.

The clashes and security operations stoked panic across the coastal region. In several villages and towns, residents said that government security forces had attacked civilians as they swept through.

On Friday afternoon, dozens of security personnel poured into Basnada, a town in Tartus province, to conduct a security sweep, according to Yamen, 31, a resident of Basnada who asked to be identified by his first name only for fear of retaliation.

He said he had been standing by the window of his fifth-floor apartment when one member of the security forces raised his rifle toward him and shot at the apartment complex. In the hours that followed, he saw security forces beating some of his neighbors.

Jad, an 18-year-old who lives in Baniyas, a suburb on the outskirts of the provincial capital of Latakia, said he had been sheltering in his home with relatives when security forces broke down their front door Friday afternoon. He, too, asked to be identified by his first name only for fear of retaliation.

He said the forces stormed into his house and demanded the family hand over cash and any weapons, and seized the family car.

The upheaval along the coast set off competing protests across the country, as thousands of people poured into the streets of major cities Thursday night and Friday, either to show their support for government forces or to demand that those forces stand down and withdraw from the coastal countryside.

Those were the first large-scale demonstrations against the new authorities since they assumed power.

The coastal provinces have posed a significant challenge for the Sunni Muslim-led government. The region is the heartland of Syria's Alawite minority, including the Assad family.

Despite making up only 10% of the country's population, the Alawites exerted outsize influence over the country during the Assad family's rule. The Alawites, who practice an offshoot of Shiite Islam, dominated the ruling class and upper ranks of the military under the Assad government.

The new government has called on all members of Assad's security forces to relinquish their ties to the former government and surrender their weapons at "reconciliation centers." While thousands have taken part, some remnants of the former government's security forces have not.

In recent weeks, armed men affiliated with the Assad government have carried out sporadic hit-and-run attacks on security forces in Latakia and Tartus. But the ambush Thursday afternoon appeared to be the most coordinated attack yet and came amid calls among some Assad loyalists to organize against the new government.

In Draykish, a town in the mountains of Tartus, the streets were nearly empty by early Thursday evening as news of clashes in other coastal areas spread, according to a resident, Ghamar Subh, 35.

Then, about 8:30 p.m., heavy gunfire echoed across the town, Subh said. A few hours later, the loudspeakers of some mosques broadcast a message calling on government forces to abandon their weapons and leave town.

Armed men surrounded the district center, where a few government security forces were stationed, according to Subh and other residents.

By dawn Friday, the government forces had abandoned their posts in Draykish and gunmen had set up checkpoints along major roads in the town, residents said.

"No one knows how the events escalated so quickly," Subh said. "Who coordinated it? Who attacked? No one is entirely sure."

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 spoke anonymously because he was not authorized to speak to the news media.

As the security forces left one village, Beit Aana, gunmen ambushed their convoy, village residents and the official said. At least 16 security personnel were killed, according to the war monitor.

The ambush set off additional clashes between government forces and armed Assad loyalists in rural Latakia.

Artillery and machine-gun fire sounded 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.

In Tartus, a port city, protesters on Thursday night chanted, "One, one, one -- Tartus and Jableh are one," referring to the Jableh area where the clashes had unfolded, according to residents.

In other parts of the country, including the central city of Homs and northwestern Idlib, thousands of people joined protests to support the government. In the capital, Damascus, a crowd of protesters gathered at Umayyad Square on Friday afternoon, some calling for a crackdown on armed remnants of the Assad government.

The escalating hostilities had put communities in Latakia and Tartus on edge. Many in the region, while skeptical of Syria's new authorities, do not support the armed resistance from remnants of the Assad government.

On Friday, security convoys patrolled the streets.

"There's total curfew in the area," said Ahmad Qandil, an Alawite leader in Jableh, adding that most people in town wanted the situation to be stabilized.

"We want safety, security" more than anything else, including money for basics like food, he said. "The situation is very confusing."