The violence sweeps the coast of Syria, sows chaos: “We have to get out of here”

The shots began at dawn on Friday in the city of Al-Haffa on the Mediterranean coast of Syria.

At first, Wala, a 29 -year -old resident, jumped from her bed to the corner of the room in her first floor apartment, flattening while the groove of shooting sounded outside the window of her room.

When the shock became stronger, he said, he crawled to the window and removed the curtain. Outside, dozens of people fled along the way, many in pajamas, since four men with green uniforms of the forest persecuted them. Then, the uniformed men opened fire. In seconds, four of the people fled wrinkled to the ground.

“I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. He was terrified, terrified, ”said Wala, who asked to be identified only by his first name for fear of compensation.

The attack in his city was part of The riots that have shaken the coast of Syria In the last four days and has killed more than 1,000 people, said the war monitoring group of the Syrian Observatory of Human Rights on the early Sunday. It was the bloodiest outbreak of violence since the rebels expelled the dictator of a lifetime, Bashar al-Assad, in early December, then tried to affirm his government about a fractured country for almost 14 years of civil war.

Violence broke out on Thursday when armed men loyal to Mr. Al-Assad ambuscated the government security forces in the province of Latakia, where Al-Haffa is located. The ambush triggered days of confrontations between Assad’s loyal and government forces.

The Observatory, based in Great Britain and has monitored the Syrian conflict since 2011, said Sunday morning that some 700 civilians were among 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 monitoring group, the Syrian Network of Human Rights, reported on Saturday that government security forces had killed some 125 civilians. These statements could not be verified independently.

The new government officials rejected accusations that their security forces had committed atrocities. But they said they were committed to investigating accusations and holding anyone who has harmed civilians.

Violence has raised the spectrum of a larger sectarian conflict in Syria and struck panic in the coastal provinces of Latakia and Tartus. The region is the heart of the Alauita minority of Syria, which dominated the ruling class and the upper range of the army under the Assad government, and included The Assad family itself. The new government formed from a coalition of rebels led by a Sunnite Islamist Muslim group.

The Observatory said that most civilians killed in recent days were alauitas.

On Saturday, the road that led from the capital, Damascus, in Tartus was almost empty when the authorities tried to seal all the traffic in the coastal region. The Government Security Forces established control points along the main roads in and throughout the city of Tartus, the provincial capital, where most stores were closed and many residents crouched into their homes.

Shadi Ahmed Khodar, 47, sat next to the road that drove from Tartus North to Latakia, watching how the occasional ambulance or the accompanied government vehicle. The streets of his neighborhood had emptied as violence extended in recent days, turning Tartus into a ghost city, he said. It is an Alawaite, but like many in the city, he said he does not support Assad’s loyal ones who have taken weapons against the new authorities of Syria.

But he was also terrified that the security forces with the new government no longer distinguish between the loyal of Assad armed and people like him, a crane operator who had worked for the Assad government.

“Maybe they simply come here and they say we are against them and kill us,” he said.

The country, feared, was accompanying more conflicts. The violence had not yet decreased on Saturday afternoon and, on the road from where it was stopped, government forces at a control point warned drivers that the gunmen were ambushing cars that led the coast to Latakia.

“We are right in the shallow waters,” Khodar said. “We have not yet reached the depths.”

In the near field of the province of Latakia, the loyal ones of Assad armed had dozens of hostages of government security personnel after taking control one day before, residents said. In other areas, local residents had taken weapons and parked outside their homes to protect their families, after listening to reports on government forces that kill civilians.

In Baniyas, a city at the north of the province of Tartus, the armed men who seemed to be with the government had broken into the predominantly alauitos of the city on Thursday night, according to four residents.

Ghaith Moustafa, a resident of Baniyas, said he had spent most of Friday and Saturday curling with his wife, Hala Hamed, and his 2 -month -old son behind his entrance door, the only place in his small apartment that was not close to any window.

Friday morning, he said he heard that the shooting pattern became stronger when armed men arrived in their building. Then he listened to the men to scream, shots and screams from the apartment under his. He later learned that his neighbors below had been killed.

“I was so scared by my baby, by my wife,” said Moustafa, 30, in a telephone interview. “She was so afraid. I didn’t know how not to show him that he was also afraid of us. ”

When the shots decreased around 2 pm on Saturday, Moustafa said that he and his family fled his department and sought refuge in a friend’s house in a nearby neighborhood that had saved much of violence. When driving away from home, I was horrified.

Every two or three meters, a body lay on the ground, he said. Blood spots were stained through the pavement. The windows of the windows were shattered and many stores seemed to have been looted, he said.

The Syrian Observatory said on Saturday that at least 60 civilians, including five children, were killed in violence in Baniyas.

“I’m surprised, I’m surprised,” said Moustafa, a pharmacist. For Saturday night, everything I could think was to leave. “We have to get out of here as soon as possible,” he added. “It is not safe, nor at all sure.”

Mr. Moustafa was among hundreds of people who fled Baniyas on Saturday, according to residents. Many sought refuge with friends who were not alauitas in the hope that their neighborhoods would avoid the worst part of more violence.

Wala, the Al-Haffa resident who said he saw men in uniforms firing people while they fled, he was covering friends and family in his department when security personnel knocked down the main door, approximately one hour after government forces had entered their city. A friend who visited from the northwest region of Idlib, where the rebels came to overthrow Mr. Al-Assad, begged them not to shoot.

“She said: ‘I’m from Idlib. My whole family is from Idlib. Please do not do anything to these people. They are a peaceful family. ‘” Wala told in a telephone interview.

The men demanded that the friend deliver her phone and shouted at Wala to open her safe, which she did. They demanded that Wala’s mother give them her gold and earrings, Wala said.

Before leaving, the men issued a severe warning: they don’t leave the house. She and her relatives rushed to her room, terrified.

But an hour later, when the shots decreased, they challenged that order to try to help someone who could listen to pleading from the street.

Outside, Wala said he found two men who had shot. One was covered with blood and asked him in a weak voice to lift his head a little from the ground. The other, shot in the thigh, begged water.

In a short time the shots rang and Wala ran back back. For Saturday night, he said, he didn’t know if none of the men had survived.