Syria’s new safety forces checked IDs and searched automobiles within the central metropolis of Homs on Thursday, a day after protests by members of the Alawite minority erupted in gunfire and stirred fears that the nation’s fragile peace may break down.

A tense calm prevailed after checkpoints have been arrange all through the nation’s third-largest metropolis, which has a combined inhabitants of Sunni and Shia Muslims, Alawites and Christians.

The safety forces are managed by the previous rebel group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, which led the cost that unseated former President Bashar Assad. On the highway from Damascus, safety groups on the checkpoints waved automobiles by way of perfunctorily, however in Homs they checked IDs and opened the trunk of every automotive to search for weapons.

Armed males blocked the highway resulting in the sq. previously named for Assad’s father, Hafez Assad, the place one foot was all that remained of a statue of him that when stood within the middle of the visitors roundabout.

The sq. has been renamed Freedom Sq., though some name it “the donkey’s sq.,” referring to Assad.

Protests erupted there Wednesday amongst Alawites — the minority sect to which the Assad household belongs — after a video circulated displaying an Alawite shrine in Aleppo being vandalized. Authorities officers later issued a press release saying that the video was previous.

Wednesday’s protests started peacefully, mentioned Alaa Amran, the newly put in police chief of Homs, however then “some suspicious events … associated to the previous regime opened fireplace on each safety forces and demonstrators, and there have been some accidents.”

Safety forces flooded the world and imposed a curfew to revive order, he mentioned.

Mohammad Ali Hajj Younes, an electrician who has a store subsequent to the sq., mentioned the individuals who instigated the violence are “the identical shabiha who used to return into my store and rob me, and I couldn’t say something,” utilizing a time period referring to pro-Assad militia members.

The protests have been half of a bigger flare-up of violence Wednesday. Professional-Assad militants attacked members of the brand new safety forces close to the coastal city of Tartous, killing 14 and wounding 10, in keeping with the Inside Ministry within the transitional authorities.

In response, safety forces launched raids “pursuing the remnants of Assad’s militias,” state media reported. The state-run SANA information company reported late Thursday that clashes broke out within the village of Balqasa in a rural a part of Homs province.

The unrest left many individuals fearful that the comparatively peaceable situations which have prevailed since Assad’s fall may break down into sectarian preventing because the nation begins to recuperate following practically 14 years of civil battle.

Those that instigated the violence “are supported by events that could be exterior that need strife for Syria to return it to sq. one, the sq. of sectarianism,” Amran mentioned.

Ahmad al-Bayyaa, an Alawite within the al-Zahra neighborhood of Homs, mentioned he and his spouse and three daughters fled to the coastal city of Baniyas when rebel forces first arrived, however got here again a day later after listening to from neighbors that the fighters had not harmed civilians.

“We had been given the concept there can be slaughter and killing primarily based on our id, and nothing like that occurred,” he mentioned. “We got here again, and no one requested to see my ID from the coast to Homs.”

Earlier than Assad’s fall, al-Bayyaa mentioned, he spent 10 years in hiding to keep away from a call-up for reserve military service and was afraid to cross a checkpoint in his personal neighborhood. After the previous Syrian military collapsed within the face of the HTS-led advance, residents of the neighborhood arrange a fruit and vegetable stand on an deserted tank in a gesture of mockery.

Within the predominantly Christian Homs suburb of Fayrouzeh, a bunch of teenage women took one another’s footage subsequent to a large cutout of Santa Claus with a Christmas tree within the city sq..

Residents of the world mentioned their preliminary fears that the nation’s new rulers would goal spiritual minorities have been rapidly laid to relaxation. HTS was as soon as aligned with al-Qaida, however its chief, Ahmad al-Sharaa, previously referred to as Abu Mohammed al-Golani, has minimize ties with the group and since coming to energy has preached spiritual coexistence.

“We had a really lovely vacation although there was some nervousness earlier than it,” mentioned Fayrouzeh resident Sarab Kashi. “The fellows from HTS volunteered and stood as guards on the door of the church buildings.”

The town’s Sunni majority, in the meantime, welcomed the brand new administration. Most of the younger males now guarding its streets have been initially from Homs and have been evacuated to opposition-held Idlib when Assad’s forces solidified management of their areas years in the past.

“These guys have been younger boys after they took them within the inexperienced buses, they usually have been crying,” mentioned Wardeh Mohammed, gesturing at a bunch of younger males manning a checkpoint in entrance of a grocery retailer on one of many metropolis’s essential streets. “Thank God, they’ve come again as younger males, as fighters who made us proud.”

The nation’s new rulers have scrambled to impose order after the preliminary anarchic days after Assad’s fall.

The previous police and safety forces — extensively identified for corruption — have been disbanded, and members of the police pressure in what was previously a regional authorities headed by HTS within the opposition-held northwest have been deployed to different areas.

Amran, the police chief, mentioned recruitment efforts are underway to construct up the forces, however he acknowledged that the present numbers are “not enough to regulate safety 100%.” The brand new safety forces have additionally struggled to stem the proliferation of weapons within the arms of civilians or non-state teams, he mentioned.

Al-Sharaa has mentioned that the nation’s patchwork of former insurgent teams will come collectively in a single unified nationwide military, however it remained unclear precisely how that will occur or whether or not the teams can keep away from infighting.

In Homs, it was clear that a number of completely different armed factions patrolled the streets, in a typically uneasy coordination. An HTS official hastened to elucidate {that a} handful of armed males sporting patches with an insignia typically related to the Islamic State weren’t members of his group.

Many feared one other flare-up of violence.

“From what occurred yesterday, it’s clear that some folks need to take the nation backwards” to the worst days of the nation’s civil battle, mentioned al-Bayya, “and nobody needs to return 14 years.”