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Fourteen staff members SyriaThe suspects killed the new security forces in an ambush loyalists of the deposed leader Bashar al-Assad in the village of Tartus, the transitional government announced on Thursday.
Security forcesmade up mostly of armed rebels who seized power earlier this month, clashed with Assad loyalists nearby Mediterranean port in western Syria as they tried to arrest a former government official accused of issuing execution orders and arbitrary decisions against thousands of prisoners in Saydnaya prison.
New interior minister Mohammed Abdel Rahman said “14 members of the interior ministry were killed and 10 others wounded” after a “treacherous ambush by the remnants of the criminal regime” in Tartus province “while carrying out their tasks of maintaining safety and security”.
He promised to deal with “anyone who dares to undermine Syria’s security or threaten the lives of its citizens.”
Armed militias led by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, or HTS, an al-Qaeda affiliate, took over the country in early December and forced the president to flee, ending five decades of rule by the Assad family.
Syrian police earlier imposed a curfew in the city of Homs following unrest linked to demonstrations that residents said were led by members of the minority Alawite and Shiite Muslim communities.
State media reported that the curfew was imposed overnight on Thursday.
Protests in Homs, a stronghold of Assad’s Alawite community, erupted after “a number of residents refused to allow their homes to be searched,” the UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said. Some called for the release of former Syrian army soldiers now imprisoned by HTS.
One protester was said to have been killed and five wounded in Homs.
The protests were apparently sparked in part by a video showing the burning of an Alawite shrine. The interim regime insisted that the footage was old and not a recent incident.
There were also protests on Christmas Eve against the burning of the Christmas tree, prompting renewed calls for the new rulers to protect religious minorities.
The country’s new leaders have repeatedly promised to protect minority religious groups who fear they could impose a conservative Islamist government.
The new regime claimed its forces raided warehouses in the capital Damascus on Wednesday, seizing drugs such as the stimulant Captagon and cannabis, allegedly used by Assad’s soldiers.
One million Captagon tablets and hundreds of kilograms of cannabis were set on fire, the interim administration announced.
Additional contributions from agencies.