Authorities said Thursday.
It has been the worst violence since Muslim-led rebels seized power.
Syrian television stationed in the government reported that at least 13 members of security forces were killed in a clash in the coastal region of Jable, according to Reuters.
The regional security chief said many members of the security forces were killed and injured in what he described as a well-planned attack carried out by militias alongside former president Beshar Assad, whose administration fell in December 2024.
It marked a sharp escalation of tensions in the coastal regions that form Assad’s Alawian sect center, and emerged as a major security challenge for interim president Ahmed Alshara, who is working to integrate his control.
Three months after Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham of Sharaa’s fallen Muslim rebels led by Assad, his efforts to reunite Syria after 13 years of civil war face countless challenges.
The tension was particularly severe in mountain coastal areas where the Syrian government deployed much of its troops and residents reported hearing heavy shootings in several cities and villages on Thursday as tensions spread.
The attack on Thursday involved several groups of militias who targeted security patrols and checkpoints in the Jaburu area and surrounding countryside, Lt. Colonel Kunaifati said.
The attack “had been wounded between many martyrs and our troops,” he added in a statement released by the Ministry of Interior. Security forces absorbed attacks in rural areas around Jable, he added, despite clashes that were underway within the city.
Alawian activists say their communities have been exposed to violence and attacks, especially in rural Homs and Latakia, since Assad collapsed.
Sharaa has pledged to operate Syria comprehensively, but no meeting has been declared between him and senior figures of Alawite, in contrast to members of other minority groups such as Kurds, Christians and Druzes.
“Arawys is not organized or united. But the dissatisfaction with the regime and the spread of demonstrations will burn militias across Syria, those who oppose the (new) regime, and those who speculate that they will speak in the name of revolution, and Syria,” said the head of the University of Oklahoma’s Center for Middle East Studies,
Authorities have declared a curfew in Tartus, a coastal city where protests erupted. Residents said security forces fired guns to disperse the crowd.
Earlier this week, two members of the Ministry of Defense were killed in Latakia by a group identified by the national media as a remnant of the pro-Assad militia.
Tensions also sparked fatal violence in Syria’s southwestern part of the week. Security guards killed in the town of Arsanamain on Tuesday and Wednesday in two days of violence report about 12 people.