At least 70 people were killed and dozens wounded in overnight clashes between the new authorities in Syria and gunmen loyal to the ousted dictator Bashar al-Assad, a war monitor said on Friday, in the bloodiest skirmishes since the collapse of the Assad government.
The fighting unfolded in Latakia and Tartus Provinces, longtime strongholds for Mr. al-Assad along Syria’s Mediterranean coast. It came hours after the killing of 16 security personnel by Assad loyalists in the Latakia countryside on Thursday afternoon, the deadliest attack yet on Syria’s new security forces.
Thousands of protesters flooded streets in the cities of Latakia and Tartus to demand that government forces stand down and withdraw from the countryside, the first wide-scale demonstrations against the new authorities since they assumed power in December.
By Friday morning, the government had deployed more security personnel to the coast to bolster their forces there as they tried to regain government authority over a handful of towns and villages where armed gunmen had effectively seized control overnight.
Government convoys were patrolling the roads of both cities on Friday, and residents were told to stay home as security forces conducted “combing operations” aimed at armed remnants of the Assad regime, according to the state news media.
“Thousands have chosen to surrender their weapons and return to their families, while some insist on fleeing” justice and continuing to fight, a spokesman for the Syrian Defense Ministry, Col. Hassan Abdul Ghani, told the state-run Syrian Arab News Agency. “The choice is clear: Lay down your weapons or face your inevitable fate,” he added.
The flaring tensions have become a critical test for Syria’s new leaders, whose rebel coalition toppled the Assad regime and installed an Islamist transitional government that has sought to consolidate control.
The coastal provinces have posed a significant challenge for the Sunni Muslim-led government as it exerts its authority. The region is the heartland of Syria’s Alawite minority, including the Assad family.
Despite making up only 10 percent of the country’s population, the Alawites exerted outsized influence over the country during the Assad family’s more-than-50-year rule. The Alawites, who practice an offshoot of Shiite Islam, dominated the ruling class and upper ranks of the military under the Assad government.
The new government has called on all members of Mr. al-Assad’s security forces to relinquish their ties to the former government and surrender their weapons at “reconciliation centers.” While thousands have taken part in that process, some remnants of the former government’s security forces have not.
In recent weeks, armed men affiliated with the Assad government have carried out sporadic hit-and-run attacks on security forces from Syria’s new authority in Latakia and Tartus.
The clashes on Thursday night were a drastic escalation of those low-simmering hostilities.
In Draykish, a town in the mountains of Tartus, the streets were nearly empty by early Thursday evening as news of clashes in other areas of the coast spread, according to Ghamar Subh, 35, a resident.
Then, around 8:30 p.m., heavy gunfire echoed across the town. A few hours later, the loudspeakers of some mosques broadcast a message calling on government forces to abandon their weapons and leave the town. Armed men also surrounded the district center, where a handful of government security forces were stationed, according to Mr. Subh and other residents.
By dawn on Friday, the government forces had abandoned their posts in Draykish and gunmen had set up checkpoints along major roads in the town.
“No one knows how the events escalated so quickly. Who coordinated it? Who attacked?” said Mr. Subh. “No one is entirely sure.”
The overnight skirmishes came hours after security personnel conducted an operation in the Latakia countryside to arrest an official from the Assad government, according to a government official who asked not to be identified because he was not authorized to speak to the news media.
As the security forces left one village, Beit Aana, gunmen ambushed their convoy, said village residents and the official. At least 16 security personnel were killed, according to the war monitor, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.
The Beit Aana ambush sparked additional clashes between government forces and armed Assad loyalists in rural Latakia.
Artillery and machine-gun fire rang out across the area throughout the afternoon as hundreds of people from Beit Aana and nearby villages fled to the countryside, the residents said. It was not immediately clear whether any civilians or Assad loyalists had been killed.
As news of the clashes spread, protests erupted in major cities across Syria, some supporting the government and others demanding that its forces stand down on the coast.
In Tartus, a port city, protesters chanted, “One, one, one — Tartus and Jableh are one,” referring to the area, Jableh, where the clashes had unfolded, according to residents.
In other parts of the country, including the cities of Homs and Idlib, thousands of people joined protests to support the government. Some called for a crackdown on armed remnants of the Assad government.
The authorities imposed a curfew from 10 p.m. Thursday to 10 a.m. Friday in many major cities, according to the Syrian Arab News Agency. On Friday morning, the authorities extended that curfew to 10 a.m. on Saturday, and few people ventured outside their homes as security convoys patrolled the streets.
“There’s total curfew in the area,” said Ahmad Qandil, a local Alawite leader in Jableh, adding that most people in the town wanted the situation to be stabilized and did not support the armed uprising against government forces.
“We want safety, security” more than anything else, including money for basics like food, he said. “The situation is very confusing.”
Reham Mourshed contributed reporting from Damascus and Hwaida Saad from Beirut, Lebanon.
