United States and Russia asked the United Nations Security Council for a closed-door meeting on Monday to deal with the escalation of violence in Syria. The information was confirmed by diplomats on Sunday, according to Reuters.
Supporters of the deposed president Bashar Al-Assad have been in confrontation with the country’s security forces for three days. The internal conflict has already left more than a thousand dead, most of Alauítas, an ethnic-religious minority supporter of Assad.
Syria’s interim president Ahmad Sharaa said today that “what is happening in the country are challenges that were predictable.” The current leader commanded the Islamic coalition that knocked down Assad.
The alauites are a Shiite minority who supported dictator Bashar al-Assad, deposed in December. The group that took power is Sunni and is accused of promoting a “systematic ethnic cleaning”.
Sharaa continued to say that “we have to preserve national unity, civil peace as much as possible and, God willing, we will be able to live together in this country.”
Syrian security sources reported that at least 200 of its members were killed in the clashes with former Loyal Military to Assad, after coordinated and ambushed attacks against their forces last Thursday.
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The attacks climbed to revenge acts when thousands of armed supporters of the new Syrian rulers from all over the country went to the coastal areas to support the forces of the new administration.
Authorities have attributed summary executions of dozens of young people and lethal attacks on residences in villages and cities inhabited by the former ruler minority of Syria to undisciplined armed minias, which have been helping the security forces and there is a lot to blame Assad supporters for past crimes.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a UK -based war monitor, said on Saturday that the two days of fighting in the coastal region of the Mediterranean represented some of the most serious episodes of violence in years in the 13 -year civil conflict.
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The clashes continued at night in several cities, where armed groups fired on security forces and ambushed vehicles on highways that lead to major cities in the coastal region, a Syrian security source told Reuters on Sunday.
(With Estadão Content and Reuters)
