DAMASCUS: More than 70 people were killed and dozens more wounded in Syria in fighting between government security forces and militants loyal to deposed ruler Bashar al-Assad, a war monitor said on Friday.
“More than 70 killed and dozens wounded and captured in bloody clashes and ambushes on the Syrian coast between members of the Ministry of Defense and Interior and militants from the defunct regime’s army,” the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said in a post on X.
It said earlier that fighting on Thursday between government forces and Assad loyalists had killed 48 people in the coastal town of Jableh and adjacent villages, saying they were “the most violent attacks against the new authorities since Assad was toppled” in December.
The overall toll during this week’s unrest was not immediately clear.
Pro-Assad fighters killed 16 security personnel while 28 fighters aligned with the ousted president and four civilians were also killed, the Observatory said on Thursday.
The earlier fighting was in the Mediterranean coastal province of Latakia, the heartland of Assad’s Alawite minority who were considered bastions of support during his rule.
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 patrols in the Jableh area.
The attacks resulted in “numerous martyrs and injured among our forces”, he added without providing the number of casualties.
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 declared.
Top officer arrested
The Observatory said most of the security personnel killed were from the former rebel stronghold of Idlib in the northwest.
During the operation, security forces captured and arrested a former head of air force intelligence, one of the 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.
Huweija, who headed air force intelligence from 1987 to 2002, has long been a suspect in the 1977 murder of Lebanese Druze leader Kamal Bek Jumblatt.
The provincial security director said security forces clashed with gunmen loyal to an Assad-era special forces commander in another village in Latakia, after authorities reportedly launched helicopter strikes.
