Vehicles traveling on the highway connecting Tartus to Latakia began to stop due to armed men urging them to continue. It was just after 5:30 p.m., and the coastal area had started to fill with the same sounds that have dominated Syrians' lives since 2011: explosions and gunfire.
"They are former regime followers who have ambushed several security force patrols", stated a loyal uniformed member to the Damascus government, while hastily deploying on one of the access bridges to the city of Jableh.
Suddenly, the Syrian city of nearly 100,000 inhabitants - known for its Roman amphitheater - was filled with vehicles full of armed men, mortar detonations, a helicopter firing rockets in the vicinity, and a population witnessing in astonishment and confusion the sound of gunfire.
"We don't know what's happening. We are already too poor to face another war," Mahmud Mustafa stated a few meters from one of the bridges targeted by snipers.
The city center residents gathered around the Al Hussein mosque, next to the main police station, whose officers began to barricade themselves in the building anticipating an attack from their adversaries.
The mosque's imam, Abdurrahman Hadada, pointed out that such aggressions had occurred a couple of times before.
"All this is happening because the Damascus government has been too tolerant with the remnants of the regime. It allowed all those villages (referring to the Alawite hamlets in the area) to keep their weapons, and now we are paying the price. Those people used to kidnap and traffic drugs, and now they don't know how to do anything else but endanger the country's peace," declared the religious leader.
The chaos that had taken over Jableh on Thursday spread to the main coastal route. Vehicles forced to return to Damascus could encounter armed groups difficult to identify, stationed on shoulders and bridges at intervals. The entrance to Banias was guarded by plainclothes men equipped with AK-47s and a few meters ahead by a group of police officers aiming their weapons at approaching cars, unsure whether to shoot or hold back.
The absolute confusion that unfolded in Jableh on Thursday was part of a coordinated action by militias loyal to the ousted regime of Bashar Assad that led to violent clashes and spread to towns like Tartus, Latakia, and the surrounding rural areas, once again putting Syria on the brink of civil war.
According to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, at least 70 people have died in the clashes, including over 16 security force members. The same source, cited by the AFP agency, stated that these are the "most violent attacks against the new authorities" since Assad's escape and the regime's collapse on December 8.
A high-ranking official of the Damascus loyal forces, Mustafa Kneifati, acknowledged that it was "a well-planned and premeditated attack" and that "Assad's militias have attacked our positions and checkpoints." Armed groups opposed to the government of Ahmed al-Sharaa attempted to assault police stations and military barracks. In Banias, the vicinity of a police position was harassed by the rebels for hours in a struggle where both sides spared no ammunition or explosives.
The bloody events began with an ambush on a security forces patrol near Jableh. Social media circulated images of the bodies of several police officers with clear gunshot wounds to the head, lying on the asphalt, surrounded by pools of blood. "They all died in the ambush. Where are the reinforcements?" could be heard from one of those present.
"We had offered them peace!", shouted another present in reference to the reconciliation process sponsored by the Damascus government after Assad's escape in December when it agreed that members of the defeated army surrender their weapons in exchange for no punishment.
Late on Thursday night, a man identifying himself as Muqdad Fatiha, a former member of the loyalists to the former regime, released a video calling for a general uprising in the Alawite regions, stating that his followers have decided to "liberate the coast from the terrorists of Jabhat Nusra (the former name of the movement led by the current head of state, Sharaa). Those who want to join are welcome."
The Alawite minority makes up 10% of Syria's 24 million people and is concentrated in the country's coastal strip, around cities like Tartus, Jableh, Banias, and Latakia, but also has a significant presence in areas of Hama, Homs, and the capital, Damascus.
Another former officer of the dissolved army, General Giath Suleiman Dala, issued a document announcing the creation of a Military Council for the Liberation of Syria, stating that after "months of injustice, sectarian violence, looting, oppression, and confiscation of Syrian lands by external aggressors," his followers are preparing to "liberate all Syrian territory from occupiers and terrorist forces" and to "overthrow the HTS regime (Hayat Tahrir al Sham, Sharaa's group).
The central government announced the dispatch of numerous reinforcements to the area and imposed a curfew in Tartus and Latakia. Images shared on the country's social media showed long convoys of armed men heading towards the coastal region. Syrian television reported that Damascus has mobilized the few armored vehicles it still has and even a helicopter and plane to try to contain the advances of the opposition.
Supporters of the new Syrian administration gathered in towns like Idlib, Aleppo, or Damascus by the thousands calling for a general mobilization to crush the uprising. Many mosques in those towns issued calls for "jihad" (holy war), confirming the serious escalation the Arab nation is witnessing.
Jableh's security official, Sajid al-Deek, tried to calm tensions by stating that the city remains under Damascus authorities and aware of the sectarian tone the confrontation is taking, he emphasized that "the Alawite sect has no connection with the armed men who opened fire on security forces. We want to stop the sectarian division."
After the initial shock following the collapse of the dictatorship in December, armed clashes in the Alawite regions have multiplied in recent weeks amid the increasing instability in the country, facing a pressing economic crisis and the risk of becoming a victim of the geopolitical rivalry between Turkey and Israel.
For Samir Haidar, a member of the Alawite community in Banias and a member of the Communist Party - a "crime" that led him to spend a decade in Assad's clan prisons - the spiral of violence "is a catastrophe and marks a new phase in the Syrian conflict." "It is an explosion taking on a sectarian character and will be fueled by disputes between countries like Israel, the US, or Turkey. Israel wants to replicate in Syria what it did in Lebanon in the last century (when the Arab nation was devastated by a violent conflict between religious communities).
Syria seems trapped in an endless cycle of violence, from which it has not been able to free itself even with the end of the bloody dictatorship that the Assad clan sponsored for decades. Sharaa's government has not established a clear mechanism to judge those responsible for the countless crimes committed by the regime. "If there is no justice, people will seek revenge," warned the Syrian-Spanish Kinan Al Nahas de la Ossa in January.
And that endless spiral, where blood calls for blood, has already begun. The massacre suffered by Fahil on January 23 attests to this. According to its inhabitants, the small village, with about 18,000 Alawite residents, was assaulted that day by nearly a hundred police officers who began to arrest former members of Assad's army.
"My brother Sleiman enlisted in the army because we are poor and he had no other way to support his family. He had 5 children. They arrived at the house at 9:30 and took him to a gas station. There were 16. There they began to beat them and took them away two by two. We were confined to the houses. We recovered the body on the 25th," recounts Hassan Brahim Hamid before being forced to interrupt his narration and start crying.
The presence of the foreign journalist in Fahil has generated an unusual interest and the presence of several relatives of the victims of that event.
Vinas Assad, 46, says that her husband, former Colonel Ali Taufiq, was arrested by a group that "tortured him so much that I couldn't recognize his face. I identified him by a ring and the mark of his glasses."
"As they took him away, holding him by the arms and with another pointing a machine gun at him, I begged them in the name of God and they told me: you don't know who God is. I told them that Ali was an engineer and that they would need that kind of people for the new Syria they intend to build. They laughed," she adds.
The residents of Fahil point out that within hours, the social networks of the neighboring city of Houla were filled with writings in which messages were read like the one that said "this is for the massacre of Houla". In May 2012, Bashar Asad's followers killed over a hundred people in that town. The perpetrators went unpunished.
A few meters from the Al Hussein mosque, passersby can see a wall where the hundreds of names of people who died during the popular uprising against the government of Asad are listed. Two names stand out separately: the former footballer and singer of the revolution, Abdul Baset Sarout, and another local icon from Jableh, Molhan Tarifi.
The walls of the Muslim temple are also decorated with photos of those who died in those dark years. From Abdul Munin Abdullatif Abed, described as the first "martyr" of Jableh, to Ammar Bilal, who died in Sadnaya prison, as read on the banner.
"We have only included about 400 names. Those we know are dead. But there are many more about whom we know nothing," explained Mohamed (who does not want to give his last name), a young engineer from the town.
At that time, just before seven in the evening, the Syrian still held out hope that the clashes would stop. "Every time there is an incident like this, community representatives intervene to negotiate. Who benefits from a new civil war? No one," he commented. A reflection that seems to have been ignored by the thousands of fighters determined to reproduce an era that was believed to be closed.