Syrian forces seek to snuff out nascent insurgency

Security forces battle for a second day to crush a nascent insurgency by fighters from Bashar al-Assad's Alawite sect in western Syria, with scores reported killed as the Islamist-led government faces the biggest challenge yet to its authority.

Syrian authorities said remnants of the ousted Assad regime launched a deadly and well-planned attack on their forces on Thursday in the coastal region heavily populated by the members of the Alawite minority.

Authorities have not issued a death toll, but the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said more than 120 people had been killed. Reuters could not independently verify the toll.

The violence has shaken interim President Ahmed al-Sharaa's efforts to consolidate control as his administration struggles to get US sanctions lifted and grapples with wider security challenges, notably in the southwest where Israel has said it will prevent Damascus deploying forces.

Thursday's violence was largely focused in the Jableh area but the unrest spread more widely. Curfews were declared in the coastal cities of Tartous and Latakia, state news agency SANA said. Security forces launched combing operations in both cities and nearby mountains, it said, citing a security source.

Civilians were advised to stay at home, it said.

A resident of Latakia city reached by phone said clashes had been going on there for 12 hours. Government reinforcements had arrived in the city, he said. A resident of Tartous city said heavy gunfire was heard as government forces entered the city on Friday morning and began firing into the air.

A security source said reinforcements had managed to enter Latakia city on Friday morning, having been unable to on Thursday because the road had been cut.

Clashes were continuing on the city's outskirts, security forces were working to open the road to Jableh, which had also been cut, and Assad-linked militias were surrounding a number of positions in Jableh, the source said.

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 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.

While Sharaa has brought much of Sunni Muslim majority Syria under the sway of Damascus, important areas remain outside its grasp, including the northeast and east which are controlled by the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces.

A statement by a grouping of Alawite clerics, the Alawite Islamic Council, laid blame for the violence on the government, saying "military convoys had been sent into the coast with the pretext of 'regime remnants' to terrorise and kill Syrians". It called for the coastal region to be put under UN protection.

Saudi Arabia, which has offered diplomatic backing to Sharaa's administration, condemned "crimes being undertaken by outlaw groups" in Syria and their targeting of security forces. Riyadh "stands alongside" the Syria government in its efforts to preserve security and civil peace, it said in a statement.