LATAKIA, Syria: A Syrian military operation against loyalists of ousted President Bashar Al-Assad has been completed, the defense ministry said on Monday, after the heaviest fighting since former rebels seized power three months ago. Clashes between Assad loyalists and the country’s new Islamist rulers in the former president’s coastal heartland have killed more than 1,000 people, mostly civilians, according to a war monitoring group.

The violence has increased concerns about the direction of Syria, where the former rebels under Ahmed Al-Sharaa and his Hayat Tahrir al-Sham group are attempting to unify a divided country while navigating the involvement of powerful neighbors. Since Assad’s overthrow, Turkish-backed groups have clashed with Kurdish forces that control much of northeastern Syria. The Zionist entity has separately struck military sites in Syria, and is lobbying the United States to keep Syria weak, sources have told Reuters.

Hassan Abdul Ghany, the defense ministry spokesperson, said in a statement on X that public institutions were now able to resume their work and provide services. “We are paving the way for life to return to normal and for the consolidation of security

and stability,” Abdul Ghany said. He added that plans were in place to continue combating the remnants of the former government and eliminate any future threats.

Sharaa vowed on Sunday to hunt down the perpetrators of the violent clashes and said he would hold to account anyone who overstepped the new rulers’ authority. Al-Sharaa’s office also said it was forming an independent committee to investigate the clashes and killings carried out by both sides.

In a speech broadcast on national television and posted on social media, Sharaa accused Assad loyalists and foreign powers that he did not name of trying to foment unrest. “Today, as we stand at this critical moment, we find ourselves facing a new danger - attempts by remnants of the former regime and their foreign backers to incite new strife and drag our country into a civil war, aiming to divide it and destroy its unity and stability,” he said.

Media reports including from the Saudi-owned Al Arabiya TV channel have suggested that Iran and allied groups in the region were behind the violence. Iran’s foreign ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baqaei roundly rejected the accusation in his weekly press briefing on Monday. “This accusation is completely ridiculous and rejected, and we think that pointing the finger of accusation at Iran and Iran’s friends is wrongly addressed, a deviant trend, and a hundred percent misleading,” he said.

Baqaei said there was “no justification” for attacks on minorities in Syria, including Alawites. “There is no justification for the attacks on parts of the Alawite, Christian, Druze and other minorities, which have truly wounded the emotions and conscience of both the countries of the region and internationally,” he said.

Abdul Ghany added that the security forces would cooperate with the investigation committee, offering full access to uncover the circumstances of the events, verify the facts and ensure justice for the wronged. “We were able to absorb the attacks from the remnants of the former regime and its officers. We shattered their element of surprise and managed to push them away from vital centers, securing most of the main roads,” he said.

Though relative calm followed Assad’s ousting in December, violence has escalated in recent days as forces linked to the new Islamist rulers began cracking down on an insurgency from within Assad’s minority Alawite sect. The fighting spiraled into revenge killings against Alawites, a community that many majority Sunnis believed was favored under Assad and that had included many senior bureaucrats and military officers. The British-based Syrian Observatory reported that more than 1,000 people were killed during two days of fighting, including 745 civilians, 125 members of the Syrian security forces and 148 fighters loyal to Assad. – Agencies