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Members of Syria's new police force were killed in clashes in Tartous Governorate, in the bloodiest night since the overthrow of the Assad regime.
The Syrian transitional government, dominated by the Islamist rebel Hay'at Tahrir al-Sham, said its forces carried out a security operation in Tartous on Wednesday evening when they were ambushed by loyalists of ousted President Bashar al-Assad. Fourteen members of the new Interior Ministry office were killed.
The fighting in Tartous, a coastal governorate and stronghold of the Assad regime, comes at a time when protests have broken out in various parts of the country after videos emerged showing the burning of a shrine revered by the Syrian regime. AlawitesIt is a Syrian minority sect to which Assad belongs and which he has control over. Some videos also showed rebel fighters trampling on bodies at the entrance to the shrine.
The interim government said that the videos circulating on social media, which show a fire consuming the Alawite shrine in Aleppo, are old and date back to the time when Hay'at Tahrir al-Sham took control of the city weeks ago. The Ministry of Interior said that the motive behind its republication was “to stir up strife among the Syrian people during this sensitive stage.”
She added, “As a result, some remnants of the former regime on the Syrian coast tried to exploit the rumors and targeted our forces.”
On Thursday, the Ministry of Information banned the circulation and publication of any content “of a sectarian nature that aims to spread division and discrimination,” and pledged to hold violators legally accountable.
Ammar Muhammad and Ahmed Bilal, the two Alawite clerics who care for the Aleppo shrine, tried to calm the escalating anger on Wednesday, calling on people to “exercise restraint and rationality” when faced with acts that “incite sedition.”
These unrest highlight the security concerns facing the country's new leadership, which has moved from ruling a small enclave in northwestern Syria to ruling the majority of a large, Sunni-majority country.
Tensions also extended to the capital, with forces affiliated with the Hay'at Tahrir al-Sham-led government deployed to restore calm in Damascus after protests erupted in the Mezze 86 neighbourhood, an Alawite-majority neighborhood.
Unconfirmed reports of attacks on Alawites and revenge killings targeting former regime officials have spread in the past few weeks, with members of the sect calling on the government to curb such incidents and deploy more troops to secure their areas.
Activists and members of Syrian civil society stressed the importance of allocating resources to establish security agencies and the Ministry of Justice to achieve stability in the country, which is divided between armed supporters of the Assad regime and armed rebels loyal to Hay'at Tahrir al-Sham.
Many loyalists and soldiers of the former regime abandoned their positions and went into hiding on the night of Assad's fall, but there are fears that some may try to launch a rebellion.
They were settlement centers They were held all over the countryWhere former military personnel can register for civilian ID cards and surrender their weapons. But most showed up without their weapons, raising the specter of future clashes in the heavily armed country.
