DAMASCUS: The US embassy in Syria has warned its citizens of an “increased possibility” of attacks during the upcoming holiday marking the end of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan. “The US Department of State cautions US citizens of the increased possibility of attacks during Eid Al-Fitr holiday, which could target embassies, international organizations, and Syrian public institutions in Damascus,” said a statement posted on the embassy website late Friday.

“Methods of attack could include... individual attackers, armed gunmen, or the use of explosive devices,” it added, without elaborating on specific threats or who may be behind them. Eid Al-Fitr, marking the end of the Ramadan fasting month, is expected begin in the coming days but its exact timing will be determined by the sighting of the crescent moon, in accordance with the Muslim lunar calendar.

Security in Syria remains tenuous after Islamist-led forces overthrew longtime ruler Bashar Al-Assad in December following nearly 14 years of war that erupted with the brutal repression of anti-government protests in 2011. Washington advises its citizens not to travel to Syria “due to the significant risks of terrorism, civil unrest, kidnapping, hostage-taking, armed conflict, and unjust detention”, according to the statement. The embassy’s operations have been suspended since 2012.

A worker at a United Nations body, requesting anonymity, told AFP that employees at international organizations in Syria had received a warning email about public gatherings that urged precautionary measures in the coming week. War-torn Syria is awash with weapons and for years has been home to myriad armed groups and fighters including jihadists. Syria’s transitional authorities face the daunting task maintaining security in the ethnically and religiously diverse country whose new security forces are still dominated by former Islamist rebels.

Last month, authorities arrested an alleged Islamic State (IS) group commander accused of planning a foiled attempt to blow up a revered Shiite Muslim shrine near Damascus. It was the first time Syria’s new authorities said they had foiled an IS attack. IS seized large swathes of Syrian and Iraqi territory in the early years of Syria’s civil war, declaring a cross-border “caliphate” in 2014. US-backed Kurdish-led forces in Syria territorially defeated IS in 2019, but the jihadists have maintained a presence in the country’s vast desert.

Close to midnight on March 6, as a wave of sectarian killings began in western Syria, masked men stormed the homes of Alawite families in the capital Damascus and detained more than two dozen unarmed men, according to a dozen witnesses.

Those taken from the neighborhood of Al-Qadam included a retired teacher, an engineering student and a mechanic, all of them Alawite - the minority sect of toppled leader Bashar Al-Assad. A group of Alawites loyal to Assad had launched a fledgling insurgency hours earlier in coastal areas, some 200 miles (320 km) to the northwest. That unleashed a spree of revenge killings there that left hundreds of Alawites dead.

Syria’s interim president Ahmed al-Sharaa told Reuters he dispatched his forces the next day to halt the violence on the coast but that some fighters who flooded the region to crush the uprising did so without defense ministry authorization.

Amid fears of wider sectarian conflict across Syria, Sharaa’s government took pains to emphasize in the wake of the violence that the killings were geographically limited. It named a fact-finding committee to investigate “the events on the coast”. The accounts by the dozen witnesses in Damascus, however, indicate that sectarian violence unfolded in the southern edges of Syria’s capital, a few kilometres from the presidential palace. The details of the alleged raids, kidnappings and killings have not been previously reported.

“Any Alawite home, they knocked the door down and took the men from inside,” said one resident, whose relative, 48-year-old telecoms engineer Ihsan Zeidan, was taken by masked men in the early hours of March 7. “They took him purely because he’s Alawite.”

All the witnesses who spoke to Reuters requested anonymity out of fear of reprisals.

The neighborhood of Al-Qadam is well-known to be home to many Alawite families. In total, the witnesses said, at least 25 men were taken. At least eight of them were later confirmed dead, according to relatives and neighbors, who said they either saw photographs of the bodies or found them dead nearby. The rest of the men have not been heard from. — Agencies