Syrian authorities launch security operation after clashes with Assad loyalists kill 71 people - Region
Syria's new authorities launched a sweeping security operation Friday after clashes with fighters loyal to former president Bashar al-Assad killed 71 people, a war monitor reported.
The violence poses the biggest challenge to the country's authorities since Assad was ousted in December 2024, in a lightning offensive by Islamist-led rebels.
Restoring security has been one of the most complex tasks for the new authorities since Assad's fall, which ended 13 years of civil war triggered by his crackdown on anti-government protests.
A curfew was enforced in the coastal province of Latakia, the Assad clan's stronghold and home to a sizeable Alawite community, the same religious minority as the former president.
Security forces began what official news agency SANA described as a "large-scale" operation in cities, towns and the mountains of Latakia and neighbouring Tartus, following the arrival of reinforcements.
The operation "targeted remnants of Assad's militias and those who supported them", a security official cited by SANA said, as he called on civilians to "stay in their homes".
The defence ministry said it had sent reinforcements to the cities of Latakia and Tartus.
According to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights' latest toll, the clashes killed 71 people over the past day, among them 35 members of the security forces, 32 gunmen and four civilians.
The Observatory, a Britain-based monitor, also reported dozens of people wounded and others taken prisoner by both sides.
The authorities have also imposed curfews in Homs and Tartus.
Mustafa Kneifati, a security official in Latakia, said that in "a well-planned and premeditated attack, several groups of Assad militia remnants attacked our positions and checkpoints, targeting many of our patrols in the Jableh area."
Kneifati said security forces would "work to eliminate their presence".
"We will restore stability to the region and protect the property of our people," he said.
SANA said meanwhile that security forces had detained Ibrahim Huweija, a general who was "accused of hundreds of assassinations" under the rule of Assad's father and predecessor, Hafez al-Assad.
Huweija, who headed air force intelligence from 1987 to 2002, has long been a suspect in the 1977 murder of Lebanese Druze leader Kamal Bek Jumblatt.
The provincial security director said security forces clashed with gunmen loyal to an Assad-era special forces commander in another village in Latakia, after authorities reportedly launched helicopter strikes.
"The armed groups that our security forces were clashing with in the Latakia countryside were affiliated with the war criminal Suhail al-Hassan," the security director told SANA.
Nicknamed "The Tiger", Hassan led the country's special forces and was frequently described as Assad's "favourite soldier". He was responsible for key military advances by the Assad government in 2015.
*This story was edited by Ahram Online.
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