Syrian forces clash with Assad-linked groups in escalating violence

Fighters linked to Syria's ousted leader Bashar al-Assad mounted a deadly attack on government forces on Thursday, authorities said, in some of the worst violence against the government since rebels seized power.

At least 13 members of the security forces were killed in the clashes in the coastal region of Jableh, the government-aligned Syria TV reported. The regional security chief said many members of the security forces had been killed and wounded in what he described as a well-planned attack.

It marked a sharp escalation of tensions in the coastal area that forms the heartland of Assad's Alawite sect and has emerged as a big security challenge for interim President Ahmed al-Sharaa as he works to consolidate his control.

Three months since insurgents led by Sharaa's Hayat Tahrir al-Sham toppled Assad, his efforts to reunite Syria after 13 years of civil war are facing myriad challenges. Among them are Israel's declaration that it won't tolerate HTS having a presence in the southwestern region near the Israeli frontier.

Tensions have been particularly acute in the mountainous coastal region where the Syrian government has deployed many of its forces and where residents reported hearing heavy gunfire in several cities and villages as tension spread on Thursday.

Thursday's attack involved several groups of Assad-aligned rebels who targeted security patrols and checkpoints in the Jableh area and surrounding countryside, the chief of security in Latakia province, Lieutenant Colonel Mustafa Kunaifati, said.

The attack resulted in the death of "many martyrs and wounded among our forces", he added in statements published by the Interior Ministry. Security forces had absorbed the attack in the countryside around Jableh, though clashes were ongoing inside the city, he added.

The Assad-led government recruited heavily from the Alawite community for the security apparatus and bureaucracy of the Syrian state, which the Islamist-led authorities are seeking to remake, including through mass sackings.

Alawite activists say their community has been subjected to violence and attacks since Assad fell, particularly in rural Homs and Latakia.

While Sharaa has pledged to run Syria in an inclusive way, no meetings have been declared between him and senior Alawite figures, in contrast to members of other minority groups such as the Kurds, Christians and Druze.

"The Alawites are not organised or united. But the spread of discontent and demonstrations against the regime will embolden rebels across Syria, those that oppose the (new) regime and those that presume to speak in the name of the revolution," said Joshua Landis, head of the Center for Middle East Studies at the University of Oklahoma.

"It may also drive foreign intervention," he said.

State news agency SANA reported that security forces in Jableh had detained Ibrahim Huwaija, a top intelligence officer in the time of Assad's late father Hafez.

A Syrian defence ministry official said security force operations in the Latakia area aimed to pursue armed groups including known war criminals affiliated with a prominent former Syrian army officer.

Authorities declared a curfew in the coastal city of Tartous where protests erupted. A resident said security forces fired guns to disperse crowds.

Earlier this week, two members of the defence ministry were killed in the city of Latakia by groups also identified by state media as remnants of pro-Assad rebels.

Tensions have also stirred deadly violence in Syria's southwest this week, with security officials reporting around a dozen people killed in the town of al-Sanamayn in two days of violence on Tuesday and Wednesday.