“We must preserve national unity and internal peace, we can live together,” said Sharaa in a video cited by Reuters, speaking in a mosque in her Mazzah childhood district in Damascus.
The clashes broke out on Thursday and marked a major escalation of the challenge to the new government led by the Sharaa movement, Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham, or HTS, three months after the insurgents took over after the abolition of Assad.
Assad was ousted last December after decades of his family dynastic regime, marked by a serious repression and a devastating civil war. The Alawites, however, have been a large part of Assad’s support base for decades.
The authorities blamed the summary executions targeted by the Allawites and the fatal raids on unruly armed militias who came to help the security forces and have long blamed assad supporters for past crimes.
The clashes continued at night in several cities, and a security official told Reuters that pro-Assad insurgents now spent their campaign, organizing attacks with crimes against several public services in the past 24 hours.
Politices
