Syria: Death toll exceeds 1000 as clashes continues
Syria’s transitional president, Ahmad al Sharaa, vowed Sunday to hold accountable anyone involved in the blood of civilians after clashes between security forces and allied groups and gunmen loyal to ousted president Bashar al Assad in the west of the country, during which more than a thousand people were killed, including hundreds of Alawite civilians.
In this regard, the United Nations, the United States and other countries condemned these massacres, calling on the Syrian authorities to put an end to them.
Likewise, the Kurdish Autonomous Administration in northeastern Syria condemned in a statement the crimes committed against the population in the west of the country.
The statement added, “We, in the Democratic Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria, strongly condemn the crimes committed against our people on the coast, and we affirm that these practices take us back to a dark era that the Syrian people do not want to repeat,” calling for “holding accountable the perpetrators of these crimes”.
In a new toll on Sunday, 973 civilians had been killed since March 6 by Syrian security forces and allied groups in the west of the country, with killings, field executions and ethnic cleansing operations.
Tensions began on Thursday in a village with an Alawite majority in the coastal countryside of Latakia province, following the arrest of a wanted person by security forces.
The situation quickly developed into clashes after Alawite gunmen opened fire, according to the observatory, which has since reported executions of Alawite civilians.
The authorities sent reinforcements to the neighboring provinces of Latakia and Tartous on the western coast, where security forces launched large-scale operations to track down Assad loyalists.
These events are the most violent the country has witnessed since the overthrow of Assad, who belongs to the Alawite minority, on December 8.
President Ahmad al Sharaa said in a speech he delivered on Sunday morning in a mosque in Damascus that what is happening in the country are expected challenges.
He added, “We must preserve national unity and civil peace as much as possible,” stressing that Syrians are able to “live together in this country”.
The Syrian presidency announced the formation of an independent committee to investigate the events that took place in the west of the country, noting that it consists of seven people.
On Sunday, the Ministry of Interior announced sending additional reinforcements to the Qadmus area in the Tartous countryside, with the aim of maintaining security, enhancing stability, and restoring calm to the region.
For its part, the official Syrian news agency (SANA) quoted a source in the Ministry of Defense as saying, “There are now violent clashes taking place around the village of Tanita in the Tartous countryside, where many war criminals affiliated with the defunct Assad regime and groups of armed remnants protecting them have fled”.
