Cyprus condemns atrocities committed over the weekend in neighbouring Syria, Foreign Minister Constantinos Kombos said, stressing that immediate de-escalation is necessary. The Republic of Cyprus had also requested that the EU take action in this regard, he said.
“The atrocities of the past few hours in neighbouring Syria, with civilian victims from minorities including Christians, Druze and Alevis, are utterly condemnable,” Kombos said in a post on X on Sunday, adding that “third parties must not be allowed to drag the country into obscurantism and extremism.”
“We called on the Syrian leadership to take all necessary measures to stop the persecution and to conduct a substantive and full investigation with accountability for those who committed these crimes,” he added.
“We insist on the necessity for immediate de-escalation, as well as the need to ensure that the political process will be inclusive and peaceful, guaranteeing the rights and participation of all religious and ethnic groups, with the necessary unity,” the minister also said.
“The Republic of Cyprus has called on the European Union to take appropriate action in this regard,” he concluded.
Syrian leader Ahmed Sharaa scrambled on Sunday to contain some of the deadliest violence in 13 years of civil war, pitting loyalists of deposed President Bashar al-Assad against the country’s new Islamist rulers.
The clashes, which a war monitoring group said had already killed 1,000 people, mostly civilians, continued for a fourth day in Assad’s coastal heartland.
The top commander of a Syrian Kurdish armed group, whose forces are in a separate battle with Turkey, blamed Turkish-backed Islamist factions for some of the most disturbing violence: the reported executions of civilians belonging to Assad’s Alawite sect. Turkey did not immediately respond to the allegation.
Interim president Sharaa’s office said it was forming an independent committee to investigate the clashes and killings by both sides. Syrians have circulated graphic videos of executions which Reuters could not immediately verify.
A Syrian security source said the pace of fighting had slowed around the cities of Latakia, Jabla and Baniyas, while forces searched surrounding mountainous areas where an estimated 5,000 pro-Assad insurgents were hiding.
Sharaa, who faces the challenge of ruling a country fraught with factional tensions, urged Syrians not to let sectarian tensions further destabilise the country.
“We have to preserve national unity and domestic peace, we can live together. Rest assured about Syria, this country has the characteristics for survival … What is currently happening in Syria is within the expected challenges,” Sharaa had said speaking from a mosque in his childhood neighbourhood of Mazzah, in Damascus.