Gunmen ambushed a Syrian police patrol in a coastal town Thursday, leaving at least 13 security members dead and many others wounded, a monitoring group and a local official said.
The attack came amid tensions in Syria’s coastal region between former President Bashar Assad’s minority Alawite sect and members of armed groups. Assad was overthrown in early December in an offensive of opposition factions led by the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham group.
The UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the ambush in the town of Jableh, near the city of Latakia, killed at least 16. Rami Abdurrahman, head of the monitoring group, said the gunmen who ambushed the police force are Alawites.
“These are the worst clashes since the fall of the regime,” Abdurrahman said.
A local official in Damascus told The Associated Press that 13 members of the General Security directorate were killed in the ambush. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to release security information to the media.
Conflicting casualties figures are not uncommon in the immediate aftermath of attacks in Syria’s 13-year conflict that has killed half a million people.
The pan Arab Al-Jazeera TV broadcaster said its cameraman Riad al-Hussein was wounded while covering the clashes.
The SANA state-news agency reported that large reinforcements were being sent to the coastal region to get the situation under control.
The Syrian Observatory said helicopter gunships took part in attacking Alawite gunmen and Jableh and nearby areas. It added that fighters loyal to former Syrian army Gen. Suheil al-Hassan, also known as Tiger, took part in the attacks against security forces.
Tensions have been on the rise in Syria with reports of attacks by militants against Alawites who had led the rule in Syria for more than five decades under the Assad family.
