DAMASCUS: An ambush on a Syrian security patrol by gunmen loyal to ousted leader Bashar Assad escalated into clashes that a war monitor estimates have killed more than 1,000 people over four days.
The attack Thursday near the port city of Latakia reopened the wounds of the country’s 13-year civil war and sparked the worst violence Syria has seen since December, when insurgents led by the Islamist group Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham, or HTS, overthrew Assad.
The counteroffensive against the Assad loyalists in the largely Alawite coastal region brought havoc to several cities and towns. Rights groups reported dozens of revenge killings resulting from Sunni militants targeting the minority Islamic sect, regardless of whether they were involved in the insurgency.
Here’s a look at the latest violence in the war-wracked country:
What started the violence?
Tensions have been on the rise since Assad’s downfall following sectarian attacks against Alawites, who ruled Syria for over 50 years under the Assad dynasty. The assaults continued despite promises from Syria’s interim president that the country’s new leaders will carve out a political future for Syria that includes and represents all its communities.
In their ambush, the pro-Assad Alawite gunmen overwhelmed government security forces and later took control of Qardaha, Assad’s hometown, as Damascus scrambled to bring in reinforcements.
Defense Ministry spokesperson Col. Hassan Abdel-Ghani said Sunday that security forces have restored control of the region and will continue pursuing leaders of the galvanized insurgency.
But despite authorities calling for an end to the sectarian incitement, the clashes turned deadly, and many civilians were killed.
Who are the dead?
Most of the dead are apparently members of the Alawite community, who live largely in the country’s coastal province, including in the cities of Latakia and Tartous. Rights groups estimate that hundreds of civilians were killed.
The Alawite sect is an offshoot of Shia Islam, and it once formed the core constituency of Assad’s government in the Sunni-majority country.
Opponents of Assad saw Syria under the family’s rule as granting privileges to the Alawite community. As the civil war intensified, militant groups emerged across the country and treated Alawites as affiliates of Assad and his key military allies, Russia and Iran.
Syria’s new interim government is under Sunni Islamist rule. Interim President Ahmad Al-Sharaa, a former HTS leader, has promised that the country will transition to a system that includes Syria’s mosaic of religious and ethnic groups under fair elections, but skeptics question whether that will actually happen.
Little is currently known about the Alawite insurgency, which is composed of remnants of Assad’s web of military and intelligence branches, and who their foreign backers might be.
Why were the Alawites targeted?
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said 745 civilians killed, mostly in shootings. In addition, 125 members of government security forces and 148 militants with armed groups affiliated with Assad were killed. Electricity and drinking water were cut off in large areas around Latakia, the group added.
Meanwhile, the Syria Campaign and the Syrian Network for Human Rights, which both advocated against Assad after the civil war began in 2011, said Saturday that both security forces and pro-Assad gunmen were “carrying out mass executions and systematic killings.”
The SNHR estimated that 100 members of the government’s security forces were killed Thursday, while 125 of an estimated 140 civilians were slain over the weekend in “suspected revenge killings.”
The Associated Press could not verify those numbers, and conflicting death figures during attacks in Syria over the years have not been uncommon. Two residents in the coastal region said that many homes from Alawite families were looted and set on fire. They spoke from their hideouts on condition of anonymity, fearing for their lives.
Damascus blamed “individual actions” for the widespread violence against civilians and said government security forces were responding to the gunmen loyal to the former government.
Can Damascus restore calm after the clashes?
Damascus has struggled to reconcile with skeptics of its Islamist government, as well as with Kurdish-led authorities in the northeast and the Druze minority in the south. Al-Sharaa has lobbied to convince the United States and Europe to lift sanctions to pave the way for economic recovery to pull millions of Syrians out of poverty and make the country viable again.
Washington and Europe are concerned that lifting sanctions before Syria transitions into an inclusive political system could pave the way for another chapter of autocratic rule.
Al-Sharaa appealed to Syrians and the international community in an address over the weekend, calling for accountability for anyone who harms civilians and mistreats prisoners. Such human rights violations were rampant under Assad. Al-Sharra also formed a committee composed mostly of judges to investigate the violence.
In a statement issued Sunday, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio urged Syrian authorities to “hold the perpetrators of these massacres” accountable. Rubio said the US “stands with Syria’s religious and ethnic minorities, including its Christian, Druze, Alawite, and Kurdish communities.”

PORT SUDAN: Paramilitary shelling on Sunday on a strategic city in Sudan’s south, where the army broke a prolonged siege last month, killed seven civilians and wounded nearly two dozen others, a medical source said.

El-Obeid, the state capital of North Kordofan, came under attack by the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces, or RSF, at war with the army since April 2023, said the source at the city’s main hospital and several witnesses.
Witnesses reported intense bombardment by the RSF on Sunday, with one shell striking a public transport bus carrying passengers, on the third consecutive day of attacks from the north and east.

The hospital source said that the shelling killed seven people and wounded 23 others, all civilians.
Last month, the army broke a nearly two-year RSF siege on El-Obeid, which sits at a crucial crossroads connecting the capital Khartoum to the country’s western region of Darfur.
The RSF has captured nearly all of Darfur while the army controls the country’s north and east and recently won back large swathes of Khartoum and central Sudan.
The war, pitting army chief Gen. Abdel Fattah Al-Burhan against his former deputy, RSF commander Gen. Mohammed Hamdan Dagalo, has claimed tens of thousands of lives, uprooted over 12 million, and created the world’s largest hunger and displacement crises.
An international aid group, meanwhile, said nearly 100 people died of cholera in two weeks since the waterborne disease outbreak began in Sudan’s White Nile State,
Doctors Without Borders — also known as Medecins Sans Frontieres or MSF — said that 2,700 people had contracted the disease since Feb. 20, including 92 people who died.
Of the admitted cholera patients who died, 18 were children, including five children who were no older than 5, and five others who were no older than 9, said Marta Cazarola, MSF emergency coordinator for Sudan.
The Rapid Support Forces group launched intense attacks last month in the White Nile State that killed hundreds of civilians, including infants.
The Sudanese military announced at the time that it made advances there, cutting crucial supply routes to the RSF.
During the RSF attacks in the state on Feb. 16, the group fired a projectile that hit the Rabak power plant, causing a mass power outage and triggering the latest wave of cholera, according to MSF.
Subsequently, people in the area had to rely mainly on water obtained from donkey carts because water pumps were no longer operational.
“Attacks on critical infrastructure have long-term detrimental effects on the health of vulnerable communities,” said Marta Cazorla, MSF emergency coordinator for Sudan.
The cholera outbreak in the state peaked between Feb. 20-24, when patients and their families rushed to Kosti Teaching Hospital, overwhelming the facility beyond its capacity, according to MSF.
Most patients were severely dehydrated. MSF provided 25 tonnes of logistical items such as beds and tents to Kosti to help absorb more cholera patients.
Cazarola said that numbers in the cholera treatment center were declining and at low levels until this latest outbreak.
The White Nile State Health Ministry responded to the outbreak by providing the community access to clean water and banning the use of donkey carts to transport water.
Health officials also administered a vaccination campaign when the outbreak began.
Cholera was officially declared an outbreak on Aug. 12 last year by Sudan’s Health Ministry after a new wave of cases was reported starting July 22.