Syrian leader Ahmed Sharaa on Sunday called for peace after many people were killed in some of the deadliest violence in 13 years of civil war, pitting loyalists of deposed President Bashar al-Assad against the country’s new Islamist rulers.
The fighting, which a war monitoring group said had already killed at least 1,000 people, mostly civilians, continued for a fourth day in Assad’s coastal heartland.
According to Syrian security, the pace of the clashes had slowed around the cities of Latakia, Jabla and Baniyas, while forces searched surrounding mountainous areas where an estimated 5,000 pro-Assad insurgents were hiding.
Interim president Sharaa urged Syrians not to let sectarian tensions further destabilise the country.
Sharaa gave the charge in a circulated video, speaking at a mosque in his childhood neighbourhood of Mazzah, in Damascus.
“We have to preserve national unity and domestic peace, we can live together. Rest assured about Syria, this country has the characteristics for survival … What is currently happening in Syria is within the expected challenges,” he said.
Recall that rebels led by Sharaa’s Sunni Islamist Hayat Tahrir al-Sham group toppled Assad’s government in December.
Assad fled to Russia, leaving behind some of his closest advisers and supporters, while Sharaa’s group led the appointment of an interim government and took over Syria’s armed forces.
Assad’s overthrow reportedly ended decades of dynastic rule by his family marked by severe repression and a devastating civil war that began as a peaceful uprising in 2011.
