BEIRUT (Dispatches) -- The death toll from two days of clashes between the ruling regime’s HTS militants and opposition forces has risen to more than 600, a war monitoring group said Saturday, making it one of the deadliest acts of violence since Syria’s conflict began 14 years ago.
The clashes, which erupted Thursday, marked a major escalation in the challenge to the new regime in Damascus, three months after militants formerly affiliated to Daesh took authority after removing President Bashar al-Assad from power.
The massacres that started Friday by HTS militants against Syria’s minority Alawite population have exposed the true face of the ruling regime which had tried to distance itself from takfiri terrorist groups such as Al-Qaeda and Daesh. 
Residents of Alawite villages and towns spoke to The Associated Press about killings during which gunmen shot Alawites, the majority of them men, in the streets or at the gates of their homes. Many homes of Alawites were looted and then set on fire in different areas, they told the AP from their hideouts.
They asked that their names not be made public out of fear of being killed by gunmen, adding that thousands of people have fled to nearby mountains for safety.
Residents of Baniyas, one of the towns worst hit by the HTS violence, said bodies were strewn on the streets or left unburied in homes and on the roofs of buildings, and nobody was able to collect them. One resident said that the HTS militants prevented residents for hours from removing the bodies of five of their neighbors killed Friday at close range.
Videos showed HTS militants speaking to camera aboard helicopters while they indiscriminately dropped old bombs over Alawite communities.  
Following the fall of Assad on December 8, 2024, many army officers and senior members have taken refuge in mountain region of Jableh, in southern Latakia which borders the Mediterranean Sea, giving rise to regular but sporadic skirmishes with HTS terrorists. 
On Thursday, a general security patrol was ambushed by gunmen, leaving 13 of the new regime’s forces dead and several others wounded. Clashes quickly spread to the region’s towns and villages, pitting HTS militants against opposition forces, who seized several military positions.
Ali Sheha, a 57-year-old resident of Baniyas who fled with his family and neighbors hours after the HTS violence broke out Friday, said that at least 20 of his neighbors and colleagues in one neighborhood of Baniyas where Alawites lived, were killed, some of them in their shops, or in their homes.
Sheha called the attacks “revenge killings” of the Alawite minority which are accused by the HTS regime of supporting the former government. Other residents said the attackers included foreign fighters from Kyrgyz and Tajikistan, and militants from neighboring villages and towns.
“It was very very bad. Bodies were on the streets,” as he was fleeing, Sheha said, speakin by phone from nearly 20 kilometers (12 miles) away from the city. He said the attackers were gathering less than 100 meters from his apartment building, firing randomly at homes and residents and in at least one incident he knows of, asked residents for their IDs to check their religion and their sect before killing them. He said the militants also burned some homes and stole cars and robbed homes.
The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said that 428 Alawites have been killed in revenge attacks in addition to 120 pro-Assad fighters and 89 from HTS terrorists.  
“This was one of the biggest massacres during the Syrian conflict,” the monitor’s chief Rami Abdurrahman said about the killings of Alawite civilians.
Syria’s SANA news agency said HTS authorities had closed all roads leading to the coastal region.
On Saturday morning, the bodies of 31 people killed in HTS revenge attacks the day before in the central village of Tuwaym were laid to rest in a mass grave, residents said. Those killed included nine children and four women, the residents said, sending the AP photos of the bodies draped in white cloth as they were lined in the mass grave.
Lebanese legislator Haidar Nasser, who holds one of the two seats allocated to the Alawite sect in parliament, said that people were fleeing from Syria for safety in Lebanon. He said he didn’t have exact numbers.
Nasser said that many people were sheltering at the Russian airbase in Hmeimim, Syria, adding that the international community should protect Alawites who are Syrian citizens loyal to their country. He said that since Assad’s fall, many Alawites were fired from their jobs and some former soldiers who reconciled with the new authorities were killed.
The most recent clashes started when HTS militants tried to detain a person near the coastal city of Jableh, according to the Observatory.