ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - At least 17 people were killed on Wednesday in Syria’s Tartous during clashes that erupted when security forces attempted to arrest an officer linked to the ousted President Bashar al-Assad, and armed men intercepted them.
“14 members of the Ministry of Interior were martyred and 10 others were injured after being subjected to a treacherous ambush by remnants of the criminal regime in the countryside of Tartous Governorate,” state media SANA quoted Mohammed Abdulrahman, Syria’s transitional interior minister, as saying.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR), a UK-based war monitor, reported that 14 members of the security force and three others from the gunmen linked with Assad were killed in the clashes. The officer’s brother and armed men reportedly set up an ambush and intercepted the security forces and targeted one of the patrol vehicles.
According to the Observatory, the Assad-linked officer was among those “responsible for crimes in the Sednaya prison,” adding that he “issued death sentences and arbitrary judgments against thousands of prisoners.”
Sednaya prison had been used to hold thousands of prisoners, both civilians and anti-government rebels, as well as political opponents.
Following the fall of Assad’s regime earlier this month by a coalition of rebels led by the Islamist Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), tens of thousands of prisoners were freed from Sednaya and other prisons across the country. The remains of thousands of others killed by torture or hanging are yet to be identified.
This comes amid an escalation in violence across Syria on Wednesday following protests in the Alawite-majority areas sparked by allegations of an attack on Abu Abdullah al-Hussein bin Hamdan al-Khasibi shrine in Aleppo province.
In response to the demonstrations, the security forces imposed a curfew in the cities of Homs, Baniyas, Latakia, Tartous, and Jableh.
