Syria vows accountability after reports of mass killings

Syria's new leader has vowed accountability and an investigation after reports of mass killings of Alawite civilians triggered an international backlash against the worst violence since Bashar al-Assad's overthrow.

In its latest toll Monday, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights war monitor said 973 civilians had perished since March 6 in "killings, field executions and ethnic cleansing operations" by security personnel or pro-government fighters in the coastal heartland of the Alawite minority community to which the toppled president belongs.

Its previous toll of 830 had specified the "executions" targeted Alawites in the Mediterranean coastal provinces of Latakia and Tartus.

United Nations rights chief Volker Turk said Sunday the killings "must cease immediately", while the Arab League, the United Nations, the United States, Britain and other governments have condemned the violence.

"We will hold accountable, firmly and without leniency, anyone who was involved in the bloodshed of civilians... or who overstepped the powers of the state," Syria's interim president Ahmed al-Sharaa said in a video posted by state news agency SANA.

Earlier Sunday, the presidency announced on Telegram that an "independent committee" had been formed to "investigate the violations against civilians and identify those responsible for them", who would face the courts.

Fighting between the new security forces and loyalists of the former government erupted last Thursday, after earlier tensions, and escalated into reported mass killings.

The fighting has killed hundreds of security forces as well as pro-Assad fighters, according to the Observatory, with the overall death toll exceeding 1,300.

Sharaa, in a separate address from a Damascus mosque, appealed for national unity.

"God willing, we will be able to live together in this country," he said.

'They gathered all the men'

Images on social media showed Syrian security forces on pickups and trucks driving past thick black smoke that drifted over the road on their way into the city of Jableh, between Latakia and Tartus.

The interior ministry said on Sunday that government forces were conducting "sweeping operations" in an area of Tartus province to "pursue the remnants of the toppled regime".

SANA quoted a defence ministry source as saying there were clashes in Tanita village in the same area.

An AFP photographer in Latakia city reported a military convoy entering a neighbourhood to search homes.

In Baniyas, a city further south, resident Samir Haidar, 67, told AFP two of his brothers and his nephew were killed by armed groups that entered people's homes, adding there were "foreigners among them".