Three days of clashes between forces from Syria’s new government and fighters loyal to the ousted dictator Bashar al-Assad have killed more than 300 civilians and scores of combatants from both sides, a war monitoring group said on Saturday.
The British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which has monitored the Syrian conflict since 2011, said that more than 400 people in total have been killed across two Syrian coastal provinces. Fighters affiliated with the government killed most of the civilians, according to the Observatory. The allegations could not be independently verified.
Information Ministry officials, responding to the allegations of killing civilians, said that they rejected “undocumented allegations accusing government forces of committing violations.” But they also said the government was committed to conducting comprehensive investigations and would hold to account those found to have harmed civilians.
“The Syrian government confirms that its forces operate according to strict standards that respect international humanitarian law and are keen to protect civilians during their operations,” a ministry statement said.
The unrest has been the bloodiest outbreak of violence since the Assad regime was ousted in early December by rebels who became the country’s new leaders. It presents a major test of the new government’s authority and has raised the specter of a larger sectarian conflict in Syria, where tensions were already high as a result of the civil war.
The clashes began on Thursday after Assad loyalists killed 16 government security personnel in Latakia province, in the deadliest attack yet on Syria’s new security forces, according to government officials and the Observatory.
Violence quickly spread across Latakia and Tartus provinces, longtime strongholds of Mr. al-Assad along the Mediterranean coast and home to most of the country’s minority Alawite population, to which the ousted president belongs. Armed remnants of the ousted regime are believed to be scattered across the two provinces and have presented a challenge to the country’s new leaders as they try to exert their authority and unite a fractured country after more than 13 years of civil war.
The government responded to the initial attack on Thursday by deploying thousands of security forces and soldiers from other parts of the country to the restive coast. Those forces sought to reestablish control over a few towns and villages that the armed gunmen had effectively seized overnight between Thursday and Friday.
The government has sought to present the clashes as a legitimate authority fighting the remnants of a brutal regime.
Government forces deployed helicopters outfitted with machine guns on Thursday around the mountainside of the coastal region, according to a government official on the coast, who asked not to be named because he was not authorized to speak to reporters. The helicopters were deployed to areas where armed Assad loyalists were stationed, the official added.
A video verified by The New York Times and filmed along the coast west of Latakia airport appears to show government fighters dropping crudely made bombs from the rear of a helicopter. A spokesman for the government in Latakia did not respond to a request for comment about the video.
Christina Goldbaum and Muhammad Haj Kadour contributed reporting.