The most deadly confrontations of Syria since the fall of Assad: What is behind the blood spill?

Syria has suffered the worst bloodshed since Bashar al-Assad was overturned from power, with over 1,000 reported people killed in violence that swept the coastal region on Thursday.

Violence put the government’s security forces led by Islamists against Assad’s Alawite minority fighters.

The dead include hundreds of Alawite civilians, which the Syrian human rights observer reported them were killed in reprisals after attacks on security forces.

What determined violence, how did the interim president Ahmed Al-Sharaa react and what did the world power say?

How did the violence be carried out?

Violence began on Thursday, when the authorities said that their forces in the coastal region were attacked by fighters lined with the regime renounced by Assad.

The government led by Sunni Islamists poured reinforcements in the area, which is strongly populated by Alawite, to crush what he described as a deadly attack, well planned and premeditated by the remains of the Assad government.

As the government reinforcements unfolded, the mosques in the loyal regions of the new administration began to ask people to save the jihad, or the holy struggle, in support of security forces.

Until Friday after, reports began to appear that civilian scores were killed in sectarian reprisals in Alawite cities and villages. On Sunday night, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a British organization reporting on the conflict, said that 973 civilians were killed in reprisal attacks by government forces or fighters aligned with them.

Over 250 Alawite fighters were killed and over 230 members of the government security forces were also killed, he said.

Reuters failed to check the taxes independently.

Who are Alawites?

Alaws are the second largest religious group in Syria after the Sunni Muslims. Their faith is an Islam Şer in offshoot.

The state led by Assad has recruited a lot from the Alawite community for its security and security apparatus, which was notorious for its brutality in more than five decades of family governance.

This has put many Aewite on the first lines of the civil war that broke out of protests against Assad’s governance in 2011. The conflict took a sectarian dimension, while the groups of Sunni Muslim rebels sought to overthrow the Assad government supported by the Islamist Iran of Lebanon, Muslim Hezbollah and others.

Sharaa led the most powerful Sunit Islamist group to fight with Assad. Known as the Nusra front, the group was part of Al Qaeda until it cut the connections with the jihadist network in 2016 and renamed its organization.

Sharaa, in a 2015 interview with Al Jazeera, described Alawites as part of a sect that “moved outside the religion of God and Islam” and urged him to give up Assad and change his beliefs to remain safe.

Since Assad was eliminated, Sharaa has hired Syria to lead in an inclusive way. But, while he publicly hired Kurzi, Christians and Druze, there were no declared meetings between him and senior figures Alawite.

Many Alawite say they have suffered as other Syrians under the control of Assad and his father.

Prior to Thursday, Alawite activists reported violence and attacks on their community following Assad’s thing, especially in Rural Homs and Latakia.

What did Sharaa say about violence?

Sharaa, on a speech on Sunday, said that the remains of the Assad government, supported by external parties, were looking to create fights and shoot Syria back into the civil war in order to divide it.

He promised that he would form a committee to find the facts and said that his results will be made public, swinging to consider anyone involved “in the bloodshed of the civilians” or to mistreat them.

He also announced the formation of a committee aimed at preserving civil peace, which would have the task of communicating with the coastal people and to provide them with the support they needed to guarantee their protection.

In an interview, Sharaa said that the mass killing of Alawites was a threat to his mission to unite the country and promised that he would punish those responsible, including his own allies, if necessary.

What do foreign powers say?

Violence determined the international alarm.

The United States, which imposes Damascus sanctions, have asked Syrian authorities to respond to “radical Islamist terrorists” who killed people in Syria and said it is with religious and ethnic minorities in Syria.

The Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz, who wrote on X, said the atrocities against Aewites showed that Sharaa had revealed “the true face” as a jihadist.

But Saudi Arabia and Turkey, allies in Damascus, both reported support for the administration, because violence increased last week. Riyadh condemned the “crimes undertaken by groups of haiduc” in Syria and their targeting on security forces.

The Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan, whose country has forces on the north -Syria, asked for calm and said that the unnamed foreign elements are partly to blame.

Iran, who supported Assad by war, warned that violence in Syria could cause regional instability.