Syria’s new leader Ahmed al-Sharaa has vowed to punish anyone involved in the latest spate of violence in the country after his soldiers gunned down hundreds of civilians from the Alawite community.
An ambush on the new regime’s forces by gunmen loyal to ousted leader Bashar al-Assad escalated into clashes, resulting in the death of about 1,000 people, mostly civilians from the minority community.
In a televised speech, Sharaa accused Assad’s loyalists and “foreign powers” of trying to spark unrest in Syria, months after armed militias led by his Hayat Tahrir al-Sham seized power.
The takeover by Sharaa’s group – a rebranded Al Qaeda and Isis affiliate – in December forced al-Assad to escape to Russia, ending five decades of his family’s rule.
“Today, as we stand at this critical moment, we find ourselves facing a new danger – attempts by remnants of the former regime and their foreign backers to incite new strife and drag our country into a civil war, aiming to divide it and destroy its unity and stability,” the leader said from a mosque in the capital Damascus on Sunday.
“We must preserve national unity and civil peace as much as possible and, God willing, we will be able to live together in this country.”
In the wake of Assad’s ouster, observers had expressed fear that the Islamist regime’s forces would target the former president’s loyalists in the largely Alawite coastal region.
The ambush on Thursday near the port city of Latakia, following clashes in several cities and towns, reopened the wounds of the country’s 13-year civil war and sparked the worst violence Syria since the December insurgency.
Sharaa’s office said it was forming an independent committee to investigate the clashes and the killings by both sides. “We will hold accountable, with full decisiveness, anyone who is involved in the bloodshed of civilians, mistreats civilians, exceeds the state’s authority or exploits power for personal gain. No one will be above the law,” it added.
Col Hassan Abdel-Ghani, a defence ministry spokesperson, said on Sunday that security forces had taken control of the coastal region. A security source told Reuters that government forces had searched the surrounding mountainous areas where an estimated 5,000 pro-Assad insurgents were suspected to be hiding.
The violence left more than 1,000 people dead over two days, including 745 civilians, 125 members of government forces and 148 fighters loyal to Assad, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which is based in the UK, said on Saturday.
Syrian security sources, however, claimed that more than 300 of their soldiers had been killed in clashes with former army personnel owing allegiance to Assad.
The UN and the US called for an immediate stop to the violence and urged Sharaa to hold “the perpetrators of these massacres against Syria’s minority communities accountable”.
“There must be prompt, transparent and impartial investigations into all the killings and other violations, and those responsible must be held to account, in line with international law norms and standards,” UN rights chief Volker Turk said. “Groups terrorising civilians must also be held accountable.”
