At least two people were killed Sunday when violence broke out at a protest by Syria’s minority Alawite community in the city of Latakia, according to a monitoring group and the Syrian state media.
The protest was one of several held across multiple cities in Syria’s coastal provinces, the Alawite community’s traditional heartland in the country. The demonstrations erupted two days after at least eight people were killed and about 20 injured in an explosion during Friday Prayer at a mosque in a predominantly Alawite neighborhood in the city of Homs.
Sectarian tensions in Syria have been rife since the fall of President Bashar al-Assad last year. The new government, led by the rebels who ended five decades of the Assad family’s brutal rule, has struggled to prevent revenge killings and violence and to impose security in a country emerging from nearly 14 years of civil war.
Members of the Alawite religious minority, to which Mr. al-Assad and his internal circle belong, have said they feel targeted for their presumed loyalty to the deposed regime.
In March, more than 1,600 civilians — most of them Alawites — were killed when thousands of armed men rushed to Syria’s Mediterranean coast after former security forces in the Assad government launched a coordinated attack on the new administration’s troops, setting off days of sectarian violence.
On Sunday, dozens of people came out in protests across the country’s coastal provinces in response to calls by the spiritual authority of the Alawite community, demanding an end to attacks and the protection of their civil and political rights, according to the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.
Syria’s Interior Ministry said that at least one of those killed on Sunday had been a member of the government’s security forces who was guarding one of the protests.
But there were conflicting reports about who the attackers and victims were.
The Syrian state news media reported that three people had been killed and dozens wounded during the Latakia protests, after security forces and civilians were attacked by supporters of the ousted Assad regime.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, however, reported that two protesters had been killed after being shot at by the government’s security forces and supporters.
The attack on Friday at the mosque in Homs was claimed by a group calling itself Ansar al-Sunna. Counterterrorism experts say the group appears to be a splinter group of the Islamic State, which years after its 2019 territorial defeat in Syria remains present in cells around the country.
In a social media post, Ansar al-Sunna said it had collaborated with “jihadists from another group” to detonate explosives inside the mosque. In June, the group claimed responsibility for a suicide bombing at a church in the capital, Damascus, that killed 25 people.
On Friday, Syria’s foreign ministry said in a statement that the attack on the mosque was a “cowardly criminal act” that represented “desperate attempts to undermine security and stability and spread chaos among the Syrian people.”
Hwaida Saad contributed reporting.
Raja Abdulrahim reports on the Middle East and is based in Jerusalem.
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