Damascus, 26 December 2024 (dpa/MIA) – Fourteen security personnel from Syria's transitional government were killed on Wednesday in an attack believed to have been carried out by supporters of ousted president Bashar al-Assad, according to a war monitor.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a monitoring group, reported that local security forces attempted to arrest the former director of al-Assad's Military Judicial Administration at his home in Tartus, in western Syria.

During the operation, young armed individuals reportedly opened fire on the officers.

The attack, carried out by al-Assad's supporters, also left three of the assailants dead, the UK-based monitor added.

Earlier, the transitional government's Interior Ministry had warned of efforts by loyalists of the ousted Syrian long-time ruler to destabilize the country.

Protests in Syria over vandalism of Alawite shrine

Large numbers of angry people on Wednesday took to the streets in several cities in Syria including Damascus in protest after a Muslim saint's shrine had been vandalized, eyewitnesses and a monitoring group said.

The protesters condemned the burning of the shrine of Sheikh Abu Abdullah al-Hussein al-Khusaiby in the northern province of Aleppo, the witnesses added.

Al-Khusaiby is revered by Syria's minority Alawite sect - an offshoot of Shia Islam - to which the family of the toppled Syrian president al-Assad belongs.

"This is an attack on all members of the Alawite sect in Syria," Haider Ali in Homs, one of the cities where the protests flared up, told dpa.

Similar demonstrations took places in the Syrian cities of Latakia, Tartus and Baniyas, and the Mezzeh suburb west of Damascus, witnesses said.

The protesters called for attackers of religious shrines to be held accountable, for "extremists" to be expelled from the ranks of the new governing administration, and for what they termed the killing of Alawites to be stopped, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported.

In response, security forces imposed a 12-hour night-time curfew in Homs and Baniyas, the UK-based monitor added.

The transitional Interior Ministry said the shrine had been vandalized by unknown groups last month when the Islamist-led rebels unleashed a massive offensive and wrested control of Aleppo from al-Assad's forces.