Syria’s new authorities launched a sweeping security operation yesterday 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 al-Assad was ousted in December last year, in a lightning offensive by Islamist-led rebels.
Restoring security has been one of the most complex tasks for the new authorities since al-Assad’s fall, which ended 13 years of civil war triggered by his crackdown on pro-democracy protests.
Photo: AFP
A curfew was enforced in the coastal province of Latakia, the al-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 Syrian Ministry of Defense said it had sent reinforcements to the cities of Latakia and Tartus.
The clashes killed 71 people over the past day, among them 35 members of the security forces, 32 gunmen and four civilians, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights’ said.
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 cities of 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.
Meanwhile, SANA reported that during the operation, security forces captured Ibrahim Huweija, a general and former head of Syria’s Air Force Intelligence Directorate, one of the al-Assad family’s most trusted security agencies, state news agency SANA reported.
“Our forces in the city of Jableh managed to arrest the criminal General Ibrahim Huweija,” SANA said.
“He is accused of hundreds of assassinations during the era of the criminal Hafez al-Assad,” Bashar al-Assad’s father and predecessor, it added.
Huweija, who headed the directorate from 1987 to 2002, has long been a suspect in the 1977 murder of Lebanese Druze leader Kamal Bek Jumblatt.
Since the ousting of al-Assad’s regime last year, the country’s new security forces have carried out extensive campaigns seeking to root out al-Assad loyalists from his former bastions.
Organizations have reported violations during those campaigns, including the seizing of homes, field executions and kidnappings.
Syria’s new authorities have described the violations as “isolated incidents” and vowed to pursue those responsible.
‘EYE FOR AN EYE’: Two of the men were shot by a male relative of the victims, whose families turned down the opportunity to offer them amnesty, the Supreme Court said Four men were yesterday publicly executed in Afghanistan, the Supreme Court said, the highest number of executions to be carried out in one day since the Taliban’s return to power. The executions in three separate provinces brought to 10 the number of men publicly put to death since 2021, according to an Agence France-Presse tally. Public executions were common during the Taliban’s first rule from 1996 to 2001, with most of them carried out publicly in sports stadiums. Two men were shot around six or seven times by a male relative of the victims in front of spectators in Qala-i-Naw, the center
Australia’s opposition party yesterday withdrew election promises to prevent public servants from working from home and to slash more than one in five federal public-sector jobs. Opposition leader Peter Dutton announced his conservative Liberal Party had dropped its pledge that public servants would be required to work in their offices five days a week except in exceptional circumstances. “I think we made a mistake in relation to this policy,” Dutton told Nine Network television. “I think it’s important that we say that and recognize it, and our intention was to make sure that where taxpayers are working hard and their money is
DISPUTE: Beijing seeks global support against Trump’s tariffs, but many governments remain hesitant to align, including India, ASEAN countries and Australia China is reaching out to other nations as the US layers on more tariffs, in what appears to be an attempt by Beijing to form a united front to compel Washington to retreat. Days into the effort, it is meeting only partial success from countries unwilling to ally with the main target of US President Donald Trump’s trade war. Facing the cratering of global markets, Trump on Wednesday backed off his tariffs on most nations for 90 days, saying countries were lining up to negotiate more favorable conditions. China has refused to seek talks, saying the US was insincere and that it
Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney is leaning into his banking background as his country fights a trade war with the US, but his financial ties have also made him a target for conspiracy theories. Incorporating tropes familiar to followers of the far-right QAnon movement, conspiratorial social media posts about the Liberal leader have surged ahead of the country’s April 28 election. Posts range from false claims he recited a “satanic chant” at a campaign event to artificial intelligence (AI)-generated images of him in a pool with convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. “He’s the ideal person to be targeted here, for sure, due to
RSS