The Syrian Ministry of Defense said it had finished a military operation in the western coastal region of the country, after days of violence during which hundreds of people were killed.
The security forces had “neutralized” loyalists of former President Bashar al-Assad in several cities of Latakia and the Tarteuses provinces and “opened the way to life to return to normal,” said a spokesman for the ministry.
A surveillance group indicates that more than 1,400 people have been killed since Thursday, including 973 civilians.
Armed men faithful to the government led by the Sunni Islamists have been accused of having carried out revenge murders against the members of the Assad minority Allawite sect following a fatal ambush for a security patrol.
The acting president, Ahmed Al-Sharaa, said that he would set up an independent committee to investigate the murders and insisted that the authors would be responsible.
Violence has been the worst in Syria since Sharaa led the Lightning rebels offensive which overthrew Assad in December, ending 13 years of devastating civil war in which more than 600,000 people were killed and 12 million others were forced to flee their homes.
The spokesman for the Ministry of Defense, Hassan Abdul Ghani, announced on X that the security operation of Latakia and Ivière was finished after having “achieved all the specified objectives”.
“Our forces neutralized the security cells and the vestiges of the old regime of the city of Al-Mukhtareyah, the city of Al-Mazairaa, the Al-Zobar district and other places in the province of Latakia, as well as the city of Dalia, the city of Tanita and the Qadmous in Tartoue province, said.
He also said that public institutions in the region were now able to resume their work, adding: “We are preparing for the return of normal life and working to strengthen security and stability.”
Abdul Ghani promised that the security forces “would also give the investigation committee the possibility of discovering the circumstances of these incidents, verifying the facts and doing justice to the oppressed”.
The government has launched the operation in Latakia province in response to an increasing insurrection by Assad loyalists in recent weeks. The region is the heart of the Alawite sect, to which many political and military elements of the Old Regime belonged.
Safety staff were caught up in armed men in Jableh on Thursday as they tried to stop an Assad regime official. At least 13 police officers were reportedly killed.
The security forces responded by sending reinforcements to the region, which were joined by supporters armed with the government. Over the next four days, they took over many Alawite towns and villages, where the residents said they had carried out revenge and looting murders.
A widely shared video showed the bodies of at least two dozen men in civilian clothes, stacked in the courtyard of a house, in Al-Mukhtareyah. Elsewhere, accounts have emerged fighters looking for members of Alawite and killing whole families on site.
Hiba, a woman allegedly in Baniyas, told the BBC that Chechen fighters who were faithful to the government had attacked her neighborhood.
“Our neighbors were killed, including children. They came and took everything, gold, everything … They stole all the cars in the neighborhood. They even went to the supermarket and they took everything shelves.”
“We were waiting for our turn. We did not know when it would come. We saw death, we saw people die in front of us and now all our friends, our neighbors, left,” she added. “They killed innocent in cold blood that had nothing to do with all this.”
A Allawite man whose family lives in Baniyas declared in a vocal message that a parent had been kidnapped from his home by armed men from the Islamist group of Sharaa, Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham (HTS), who went to the door at the door of the Alawites.
“Her mother made a mistake by opening the door when she did. A member of HTS pulled between her legs … So she shouted,” he said. “Her son … ran to see what happened with her. When they [saw] They took him with them and disappeared. And they didn’t come back. “”
He also said that residents of the Baniyas Alawite districts were still hiding in their homes on Monday morning because they were too afraid to venture outside to see if he was sure.
The bodies of people killed had been buried in a mass tomb near a sanctuary on the outskirts of the city, while those who have been kidnapped have not yet returned, he added.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a surveillance group based in the United Kingdom, reported that more than 1,450 people had been killed in Latakia, Tarteous, Hama and Homs.
They included 973 civilians who, according to him, died of “killings, field executions and ethnic cleaning operations” by security personnel or pro-government fighters, as well as 231 security staff and 250 pro-Assad fighters.
Security sources also told the news agency in Reuters that 300 security staff had been killed.
The BBC has not been able to independently check the death tolls.
The Sana state news agency said that a mass grave containing security personnel had been found in the hometown of the former president of Qardaha on Sunday. Turkey Syria TV cited residents saying that the Loyalists of Assad had buried the police killed during the recent fights there.
The UN Human Rights Head, Volker Türk, said that his office had received “extremely disturbing reports from whole families, including women, children and combatants, killed”.
“There are summary execution reports on a sectarian basis by unidentified authors, by members of the security authorities for the guardian authorities, as well as by elements associated with the former government,” he added.
He demanded rapid measures from the interim authorities of Syria to protect civilians and hold those responsible for murders and other violations that were held to count.
