Syrian forces clash with Assad-linked militants in escalating violence

DAMASCUS (Reuters) -Fighters loyal to Syria's ousted leader Bashar al-Assad mounted a deadly, well-planned attack on government forces on Thursday, authorities said, in some of the worst violence against the government since Islamist-led rebels seized power.

At least 13 members of the security forces were killed in the clashes in the coastal region of Jableh, the government-aligned Syria TV reported. The regional security chief said many members of the security forces had been killed and wounded in the attack by "remnants of the Assad militias".

It marked a sharp escalation of tensions in the coastal area that forms the heartland of Assad's Alawite sect and has emerged as a big security challenge for interim President Ahmed al-Sharaa as he works to consolidate his control.

Three months since Islamist insurgents led by Sharaa's Hayat Tahrir al-Sham toppled Assad, his efforts to reunite Syria after 13 years of civil war are facing myriad challenges. Among them are Israel's pledge to prevent Damascus from deploying forces into the southwestern region near the Israeli frontier.

Tensions have been particularly acute in the mountainous coastal region where the Syrian government has deployed many of it security forces and where a security source said Assad-aligned militias had managed to regroup.

Thursday's attack involved several groups of Assad-aligned militias who targeted security patrols and checkpoints in the Jableh area and surrounding countryside, the chief of security in Latakia province, Lieutenant Colonel Mustafa Kunaifati, said.

The attack "resulted in the fall of many martyrs and wounded among our forces", he added in statements published by the Interior Ministry. Security forces had absorbed the attack in the countryside around Jableh, though clashes were ongoing inside the city, he added.

A defence ministry official said security force operations in the Latakia area aimed to pursue armed groups including known war criminals affiliated with a prominent former Syrian army officer.

Authorities declared a curfew in the coastal city of Tartous where protests against the government erupted. A resident said security forces fired guns to disperse crowds.

Earlier this week, two members of the defence ministry were killed in the city of Latakia by groups also identified by state media as remnants of pro-Assad militias.

Tensions have also stirred deadly violence in Syria's southwest this week, with security officials reporting around a dozen people killed in the town of al-Sanamayn in two days of violence on Tuesday and Wednesday.

(Reporting by Damascus bureau; Suleiman al-Khalidi in Amman and Timour Azhari in Beirut; writing by Tom Perry; editing by Toby Chopra, Bernadette Baum and Mark Heinrich)