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Members of Syria’s new police force have been killed in clashes in Tartus province, marking the most violent night since the ousting of the Assad regime.
The Syrian transitional government, which is dominated by the Islamist rebel group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, said its forces were carrying out a security operation in Tartus on Wednesday night when they were ambushed by people loyal to deposed president Bashar al-Assad. Fourteen members of the new interior ministry’s office were killed.
The fighting in Tartus, a coastal province and Assad regime bastion, comes as protests have erupted in various parts of the country after videos surfaced showing the burning of a shrine revered by Alawites, a Syrian minority sect that Assad belongs to and empowered. Some videos also showed rebel fighters stepping on dead bodies at the shrine’s entrance.
The interim government said the videos circulating on social media showing a fire engulfing the Alawite mausoleum in Aleppo were old and dated back to when HTS took control of the city weeks ago. The motive behind republishing them was to “stir up strife among the Syrian people during this sensitive stage”, said the interior ministry.
“As a result, some remnants of the former regime on the Syrian coast tried to exploit the rumours and targeted our forces,” it added.
The ministry of information on Thursday banned the circulation and publication of content “of a sectarian nature that aims to spread division and discrimination” and vowed to legally hold violators accountable.
Ammar Mohammed and Ahmed Bilal, the two Alawite clerics that tend to the Aleppo shrine, had attempted to quell the mounting anger on Wednesday and called for people to “exercise self-control and be rational” when confronted with acts that “incite sedition”.
The unrest highlights the security concerns facing the country’s new leadership, which has gone from governing a small pocket in Syria’s north-west to ruling the majority of the large predominantly Sunni country.
Tensions have also spread to the capital, with forces affiliated to the HTS-led government deployed to restore calm in Damascus after protests erupted in the Mezzeh 86 district, a predominantly Alawite neighbourhood.
Unconfirmed reports of attacks on Alawites and revenge killings targeting former regime officials have circulated in the past few weeks, with members of the community calling for the government to curb these incidents and deploy more forces to secure their areas.
Activists and members of Syria’s civil society have emphasised the importance of dedicating resources to setting up security apparatus and the justice ministry to bring stability to the country divided between armed supporters of the Assad regime and armed rebels loyal to HTS.
Many of the former regime’s loyalists and soldiers abandoned their posts and went into hiding on the night of Assad’s fall, but there are fears some could attempt to mount an insurgency.
Settlement centres have been set up around the country, where former military personnel can sign up for civilian IDs and turn in their arms. But most have been showing up without their weapons, raising the spectre of future clashes in the heavily armed country.
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