Syria imposes curfew after its worst clashes since the Assad regime ouster

DAMASCUS, Syria — Syria’s new government sent in security reinforcements and imposed curfews on a key coastal area after some of the biggest clashes since the fall of the regime with fighters loyal to the deposed Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

The state-run Syrian Arab News Agency said the government imposed a curfew on the port cities of Latakia and Tartous after the clashes, warning people not to leave their homes. It said the interim government sent in security reinforcements from other parts of the country to restore order.

“As part of a pre-planned and deliberate attack, several groups of Assad militia remnants attacked our points and checkpoints, and targeted many of our patrols,” SANA quoted Lt. Col. Mustafa Knefati, the public security director in Latakia, as saying. He said, without specifying numbers, that “many” of the government forces were killed or wounded in the clashes near the coastal town of Jableh.

Turkish-based Syria TV, allied with the Syrian government, said at least 13 government security personnel were killed in an ambush near Jableh on Thursday. The interim government rushed in security personnel from Idlib, where the main armed group backing the new Syrian government is based, and from other cities into the coastal region.

Alawite leaders say their community around Latakia and Tartous as well as near Homs, Syria’s third-biggest city, have been targeted since the Assad regime was toppled in December. Assad was from the Alawite community, an offshoot of Shia Islam.

In December, a coalition of opposition fighters led by the Islamist militant group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) took over cities and eventually Damascus as regime forces retreated.

Syrian activists said Thursday’s clashes with government forces were followed by killings of Alawite men in the coastal region on Friday.

Activists Friday circulated video showing about 20 bodies lying by the side of the road as proof of what they called extrajudicial killings. The killings could not be independently verified. Reuters news agency said it had verified the location of the video as al-Mukhtareyah and the timing of the video as taken within the last two months.

SANA cited an unnamed security source as saying killings there were individual actions taken after people streamed into the region after attacks on government fighters. It quoted the security source as saying the government was working to stop those killings.

A U.K.-based human rights monitoring agency said men in the community were killed execution style after more fighters affiliated with the new government flooded into the coastal region in response to the clashes.

There was no official comment from the government or the interior ministry.