Fight against Assad supporters
Syrian troops are said to have executed dozens of civilians
Updated on 08.03.2025 – 9:50 a.m.Reading time: 3 min.
In the former civil war country there were violent fights with many deaths. Dozens of people are said to have been executed.
With the worst outbreak of violence in Syria since the change of power around three months ago, hundreds of people were reported or injured. Fighters on the side of the new rulers are said to have executed more than 160 civilians, including women and children, reports the Syrian observation center for human rights based in London.
The victims are said to be members of the Alevi minority, who also belongs to the fallen dictator Bashar al-Assad. The violence was apparently triggered by Assad’s followers.
“Massers were committed to the Alevi religious community,” said the director of the UK-based observation center, Rami Abdel-Rahman, the German press agency. An eyewitness in the city of Banias, where 60 people alone are said to have been killed, the dpa said on the phone that there was total chaos. “Innocent people who were unarmed were either shot in their houses or before the eyes of their families,” said the man who did not want to be named for fear of reprisals. The city of Banias is located in northwestern Syria.
Transitional President Ahmed al-Sharaa turned to the population on Friday evening. Removing the fallen ex-government had tried to “test the new Syria” with attacks. Al-Sharaa praised the security forces’ reaction and called on the attackers to put down their weapons. Anyone who commits attacks against civilians is punished hard, the former rebel manager announced at the same time. He did not mention reports on massacres.
The fights played primarily on the Mediterranean coast, the region is considered a stronghold of the religious group of Alevis. Especially in the city of Dschabla about 25 kilometers south of Latakia, the capital of the province of the same name, there are serious fights. For Latakia and the coastal city of Tartus further south, starting blocks were imposed by Saturday morning.
The head of the Syrian secret service, Anas Khatab, blamed leading figures from the military and security apparatus of the fallen ex-President Bashar al-Assad for the attacks. These had launched a treacherous operation in which dozens of members of the army and the police were killed, Khatab announced by short message service X. They would be controlled from abroad. According to a report by the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, 16 members of the government’s security forces were killed on Thursday.
According to an officer, the government moved larger troops on Friday to the coastal region. This is said to have occurred heavy battles. The government troops used artillery guns, tanks and rocket launchers, it said.
Thousands of people gathered in Damascus and several other cities to demonstrate against the armed supporters of the fallen ex-president Assad. Many demanded that the armed attacks to be returned and the responsible persons in court.
In the mountainous coastal region, some armed groups with connections to the predecessor government fallen in December are active. The spokesman for the Syrian Ministry of Defense, Hasan Abdal Gany, said who who did not lay down his weapons had to face an “inevitable fate”.
Assad had ruled Syria for more than two decades. After a lightning offensive led by the Islamist group HTS at the end of last year, he fled to Russia. Since then, the new transitional government, led by President Ahmed al-Sharaa, has been trying to restore security in the country and to boost the economy again. The struggles that have now broken out are considered the hardest since the overthrow.