ANGRY PROTESTS BROKE out yesterday in Syria over a video showing an attack on an Alawite shrine, with a war monitor saying one demonstrator was killed in Homs city.

In an unrelated incident in Tartus province, a stronghold of deposed ruler Bashar al-Assad’s Alawite minority, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitor reported deadly clashes over the attempted arrest of a former official.

The Observatory said 14 security personnel of Syria’s new authorities and three armed men were killed in clashes in Tartus province when forces sought to arrest an Assad-era officer linked to the notorious Saydnaya prison.

In the central city of Homs, where protesters took to the streets earlier over the shrine attack video, the monitor said one demonstrator was killed and five others wounded “after security forces… opened fire to disperse” the crowd.

The transitional authorities appointed by Islamist group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), which led the offensive that toppled Assad, said in a statement that the shrine attack was not recent.

The footage showing “the storming and attack” of the shrine in Aleppo is “old and dates to the time of the liberation” of the northern Syrian city earlier this month, an interior ministry statement said.

It said the attack was carried out by “unknown groups” and that “republishing” the video served to “stir up strife among the Syrian people at this sensitive stage”.

Thousands-strong demonstrations were reported in the coastal cities of Tartus and Latakia, also an Alawite stronghold, as well as other areas, including Assad’s hometown of Qardaha.

The protests are the largest by the Alawites since Assad’s fall earlier this month, and come a day after hundreds of Syrians protested in the capital Damascus against the torching of a Christmas tree.

Syria’s new Islamist rulers have sought to assure religious and ethnic minorities that their rights would be upheld.

Images from Jableh on Wednesday showed large crowds in the streets, some chanting slogans including “Alawite, Sunni, we want peace”.

“We are calling for those who attacked the shrine to be held to account,” said Ali Daoud, a protester in Jableh.

State news agency SANA said police in central Homs imposed a curfew from 6:00pm (1500 GMT) until 8:00am on Thursday, while local authorities in Jableh also announced a nighttime curfew.

The Observatory said the protests erupted after a video began circulating Wednesday showing “an attack by fighters” on an important Alawite shrine in the Maysaloon district of Syria’s second city Aleppo.

It said five workers were killed and that the shrine was set ablaze.

Observatory chief Rami Abdel Rahman said the exact date of the video was unknown, but that it was filmed early this month, after the HTS-led offensive began in late November.

AFP was unable to independently verify the footage or the date of the incident.

© – AFP 2024