Over 600 killed in two days of clashes and revenge attacks in Syria

The death toll from two days of clashes between security forces and loyalists of ousted Syrian President Bashar Assad and revenge killings that followed 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 government in Damascus, three months after insurgents took authority after removing Assad from power.

The government has said that they were responding to attacks from remnants of Assad's forces and blamed individual actions for the rampant violence.

The revenge killings that started Friday by Sunni Muslim gunmen loyal to the government against members of Assad's minority Alawite sect are a major blow to Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, the faction that led the overthrow of the former government. Alawites made up a large part of Assad's support base for decades.

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, two residents of Syria's coastal region 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 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 gunmen prevented residents for hours from removing the bodies of five of their neighbours killed Friday at close range.

Ali Sheha, a 57-year-old resident of Baniyas who fled with his family and neighbours hours after the violence broke out Friday, said that at least 20 of his neighbours and colleagues in one neighbourhood 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 for the crimes committed by Assad's government. Other residents said the gunmen included foreign fighters, and militants from neighbouring villages and towns.

It was very very bad. Bodies were on the streets, as he was fleeing, Sheha said, speaking by phone from nearly 20 kilometres away from the city. He said the gunmen were gathering less than 100 metres 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 gunmen also burned some homes and stole cars and robbed homes.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a war monitor, said that 428 Alawites have been killed in revenge attacks in addition to 120 pro-Assad fighters and 89 from security forces. The Observatory's chief Rami Abdurrahman said that revenge killings stopped early Saturday.

This was one of the biggest massacres during the Syrian conflict, Abdurrahman said about the killings of Alawite civilians.

No official figures have been released.