Friday, the shots started at dawn in the city of Al-Haffa on the Mediterranean coast of Syria.
At the beginning, Wala, a 29-year-old resident of the city, jumped from her bed at the corner of the room in her apartment on the first floor, flattening while the rat-tat of gunshots sounded in front of the window of her room.
When the bustle has become stronger, she said, she slipped to the window and took off the curtain. Outside, dozens of people fled on the road, many in pajamas, while four men in Green Forest uniforms continued them. Then the men in uniform opened fire. In a few seconds, four of the people on the run crumple on the ground.
“I couldn’t believe what I saw. I was terrified, terrified, “said Wala, who asked to be identified only by his first name for fear of reprisals.
The attack on his city was one of the troubles that rocked the Syrian coast in the past four days and have killed more than 1,000 people, said the Syrian war surveillance group for human rights on Sunday. It was the bloodiest violence since the rebels ousted the longtime dictator, Bashar al-Assad, in early December, then sought to assert their reign on a country fractured by almost 14 years of civil war.
Violence broke out on Thursday when armed men faithful to Mr. Al-Assad set an ambush to the government’s security forces in the province of Latakie, where Al-Haffa is located. The ambush sparked days of clashes between the loyalists of Assad and the government forces.
The observatory, which has been based in Great Britain and has been monitored the Syrian conflict since 2011, said 700 civilians early on Sunday were one of the more than 1,000 dead, most of them killed by government forces.
At least 65 civilians were killed in Al-Haffa, according to the observatory.
Another war surveillance group, the Syrian network for human rights, reported on Saturday that government security forces had killed around 125 civilians. These complaints could not be verified independently.
The officials of the new government rejected the accusations that his security forces had committed atrocities. But they said they were determined to investigate the accusations and keep anyone who had injured the responsible civilians.
The acting president of Syria, Ahmed Al-Shara, called to the unity as he moved to reassure the nation after the fatal clashes.
“We must preserve national unity and civil peace,” he said in a Damascus mosque on Sunday, according to a video that circulated online. “We call on Syrians to be reassured because the country has the fundamental principles of survival.”
Violence has raised the spectrum of a greater sectarian conflict in Syria and has taken panic in the coastal provinces of Latakia and Tartus. The region is the heart of the Alawish minority of Syria, which dominated the ruling class and the higher ranks of the military under the government of Assad, and included the Assad family itself. The new government was formed from a coalition of rebels led by an Islamist Sunni Muslim group.
The observatory said that most civilians killed in recent days were allawites.
On Saturday, the highway leading to the capital, Damascus, in Tartus was almost empty while the authorities were trying to seal all traffic in the coastal region. Government security forces have set up control points along the main roads to and throughout the city of Tartus, the provincial capital, where most of the stores have been closed and many residents have lowered themselves at home.
Shadi Ahmed Khodar, 47, was seated near the highway leading northern Tartus in Latakia, looking at the occasional ambulance or the passing government vehicle. The streets of his neighborhood have been emptied when violence raged in recent days, transforming Tartus into a ghost city, he said. He is a Allawaite but like many in the city, he said that he did not support the Loyalists of Assad who took up arms against the new authorities of Syria.
But it was also terrified that the security forces with the new government no longer distinguish the armed Loyalists of Assad and people like him – a crane operator who had worked for the Assad government.
“Maybe they will come here and say that we are against them and will kill us,” he said.
The country, he feared, rose up to more conflicts. Violence had not yet disappeared on Saturday afternoon and, on the road to where it was held, government forces at a checkpoint warned the drivers that armed men kicked out cars riding the coast towards Latakia.
“We are just in shallow waters,” said Khodar. “We have not yet reached depths.”
In the neighboring campaign of the Latakia province, the Loyalists armed with Assad held dozens of government staff hostage after taking control earlier, residents said. In other regions, local residents had taken up arms and were stationed outside their home to protect their families, after hearing reports on government forces killing civilians.
In Baniyas, a city in the northern tip of the province of Tartus, armed men who seemed to be with the government, the predominantly city districts of the city of the city on Thursday evening, according to four residents.
Ghaith Moustafa, a resident of Baniyas, said that he had spent most of Friday and Saturday snuggle up with his wife, Hala Hamed, and their 2 -month -old son behind their gateway – the only place in their small apartment that was near any window.
Early Friday morning, he said that he had heard that the reason for shooting gets closer while armed men reached his building. Then he heard men screaming, shots and cries coming from the apartment under his. He later learned that his neighbors below had been killed.
“I was so afraid for my baby, for my wife,” said Moustafa, 30, during a telephone interview. “She was so afraid. I did not know how not to show him that I was also afraid for us. »»
When the gunshots calmed down around 2 p.m. on Saturday, Mr. Moustafa said he and his family had fled their apartment and had asked for a refuge with a friend in a neighboring neighborhood that had been spared a large part of the violence. Driving from the house, he was horrified.
Every two or three meters, a body is lying on the ground, he said. Blood stains have been coated with the road. The windows were broken and many stores seemed to have been looted, he said.
The Syrian observatory said on Saturday that at least 60 civilians, including five children, had been killed in violence in Baniyas.
“I’m shocked, I’m just shocked,” said Moustafa, a pharmacist. Saturday evening, everything he could think was to leave. “We have to go out from here as soon as possible,” he added. “It’s not certain, not at all sure.”
Mr. Moustafa was one of the hundreds of people who fled Baniyas on Saturday, the residents said. Many have sought a shelter with friends who were not allawites in the hope that their neighborhoods would avoid the weight of all violence.
Wala, the resident of Al-Haffa who said she saw uniform men shooting people while leaks, withdrew with friends and family in her apartment when the security staff overturned the front door, about an hour after the government forces had entered her city. A friend visiting the northwest region of Idlib, where the rebels who overthrew al-Assad came, pleaded them not to shoot.
“She said,” I come from Idlib. My whole family is Idlib. Please do not do anything to these people. They are a peaceful family, “said Wala during a telephone interview.
The men demanded that the friend put her phone back and shouted to Wala to open her safe, which she did. They demanded that Wala’s mother will give them her gold necklace and earrings, Wala said.
Before leaving, the men issued a severe warning: do not leave the house. She and her relatives rushed into her room, terrified.
But an hour later, when the shots calmed down, they challenged this order to try to help someone they could hear the street.
Outside, Wala said that she had found two men who had been slaughtered. One was covered with blood and asked him in a weak voice to lift the head of the ground a little. The other, shot in the thigh, begged the water.
Before time, gunshots sounded and Wala returned inside. Saturday evening, she said, she didn’t know if one or the other man had survived.
Raja Abdulrahim Contributed reports.
