Three days of clashes between fighters affiliated to the new leaders of Syria and those faithful to the external dictator Bashar al-Assad left deaths of dozens of civilians, according to two war monitoring groups, who reported on Saturday that many of them had been killed by the government forces.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which has monitored the Syrian conflict since 2011, declared on Sunday at the beginning that over 1,000 people had been killed in the coastal provinces of Tartus and Latakia. That figure included about 700 civilians, most of the government forces. The information cannot be verified independently.
Another monitoring group, the Syrian network for human rights, previously reported that the government’s security forces had killed around 125 civilians. He said that men of all ages were among the victims and that the forces did not distinguish between civilians and fighters.
Officials of the Ministry of Information, which respond to the accusations of killing civilians, have declared that they had rejected “accusations without documents that accuse government forces of committing violations”. But they also said that the government undertook to conduct global investigations and would take into account those who found that they damaged civilians.
“The Syrian government confirms that its forces operate according to storms that respect international humanitarian law and are eager to protect civilians during their operations,” said a declaration by the Ministry.
The Observatory stated that most of the civilian civilians came from the Alawita religious minority of the country, to which it belongs to the Assad, but could not even be verified independently. The monitoring group said that dozens of fighters have also been killed on both sides of the conflict.
The Syrian network for human rights said that Assad’s lealists killed more than 100 security forces for the new government.
The Ministry of Defense said on Saturday afternoon to the media of the Syrian state that the forces had ruled control over most of the areas that had been taken by the former remains of the regime and that the roads that led to the coastal area had been closed “to regulate violations, prevent transgressions and gradually restore stability in the area”.
The unrest were the bloodiest outbreak of violence since the Assad regime was expelled in early December by the rebels who became the new leaders of the country. It presents an important test of the authority of the new government and has increased the spectrum of a wider sectarian conflict in Syria, where tensions were already high due to the civil war.
By Saturday afternoon, the Syrian red crescent had been granted permission to enter one of the cities to evacuate the wounded, said Hider Younes, spokesperson for the Red Crescent branch in Tartus.
The clashes began on Thursday after Assad’s loyalists killed 16 government security staff in the province of Latakia, in the most fatal attack on the new security forces of Syria, according to government officials and the observatory.
Violence spread rapidly in the provinces of Latakia and Tartus, a longtime roccafori of Mr. Al-Assad along the Mediterranean coast and home to most of the country’s Alawites. It is believed that the armed remains of the expelled regime are scattered between the two provinces and have presented a challenge to the new leaders of the country as they try to exercise their authority and combine a fractured country after more than 13 years of civil war.
The government responded to the initial attack on Thursday unfolding thousands of security forces and soldiers from other parts of the country to the regional coast. The government has tried to present clashes as a legitimate authority that fights the remains of a brutal regime.
For the first time, the new government forces have deployed helicopters with machine guns on Thursday around the mountain of the coastal region, according to a government official on the coast, who asked not to be appointed because he was not authorized to speak with journalists. The helicopters were lined up in areas where the lealist of Assad Armati were stationed, added the official.
A video verified by the New York Times and shot along the Costa Airport west of Latakia seems to show government fighters that reuse the charges of anti-submarine of Russian manufacture, letting them fall like bombs on the back of a helicopter. A government spokesman in Latakia did not respond to a request for commenting on the video. A journalist with the media of the Syrian state, Muhammad al -otman, said that the ammunition was dropped on mountainous areas where the old remains of the regime remain.
The Assad regime has aroused an international condemnation for its frequent use of helicopters for indiscriminate bombings, leaving for years the “improvised barrel bombs on civil populations. The use of anti -Sommerible ammunition for this purpose adapts to the model of the old regime to use everything that could manufacture or reuse for the launch of air attacks via helicopter.
The ammunition used in helicopter attacks seemed to be accusations of Russian depth RBG-25, which are normally launched by ships for use against submarines, said Trevor Ball, a former explosive disposal technician of the American army. Most likely they originated from old actions of the Assad regime, he said.
“This is a little different from how they are designed to be lined up,” Ball said. “These do not cause as much damage as the barrel bombs the regime of Assad commonly used.”
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