BEIRUT (AP) — The death toll from two days of clashes between Syrian security forces and loyalists of ousted President Bashar Assad and revenge killings that followed has risen to more than 1,000, a war monitoring group said Saturday, making it one of the deadliest acts of violence since Syria’s conflict began 14 years ago.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said in addition to 745 civilians killed, mostly in shootings from close distance, 125 government security force members and 148 militants with armed groups affiliated with Assad were killed. It added that electricity and drinking water were cut off in large areas around the city of Latakia.

The clashes, which erupted Thursday, marked a major escalation in the challenge to the new government in Damascus, three months after insurgents took authority after removing Assad from power.

The government has said that they were responding to attacks from remnants of Assad’s forces and blamed “individual actions” for the rampant violence.

The revenge killings that started Friday by Sunni Muslim gunmen loyal to the government against members of Assad’s minority Alawite sect are a major blow to Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, the faction that led the overthrow of the former government. Alawites made up a large part of Assad’s support base for decades.

Residents of Alawite villages and towns spoke to The Associated Press about killings during which gunmen shot Alawites, the majority of them men, in the streets or at the gates of their homes. Many homes of Alawites were looted and then set on fire in different areas, two residents of Syria’s coastal region told the AP from their hideouts.

They asked that their names not be made public out of fear of being killed by gunmen, adding that thousands of people have fled to nearby mountains for safety.

Residents of Baniyas, one of the towns worst hit by the violence, said bodies were strewn on the streets or left unburied in homes and on the roofs of buildings, and nobody was able to collect them. One resident said that the gunmen prevented residents for hours from removing the bodies of five of their neighbors killed Friday at close range.

Ali Sheha, a 57-year-old resident of Baniyas who fled with his family and neighbors hours after the violence broke out Friday, said that at least 20 of his neighbors and colleagues in one neighborhood of Baniyas where Alawites lived, were killed, some of them in their shops, or in their homes.

Sheha called the attacks “revenge killings” of the Alawite minority for the crimes committed by Assad’s government. Other residents said the gunmen included foreign fighters, and militants from neighboring villages and towns.

“It was very very bad. Bodies were on the streets,” as he was fleeing, Sheha said, speaking by phone from nearly 20 kilometers (12 miles) away from the city. He said the gunmen were gathering less than 100 meters from his apartment building, firing randomly at homes and residents and in at least one incident he knows of, asked residents for their IDs to check their religion and their sect before killing them. He said the gunmen also burned some homes and stole cars and robbed homes.

The Observatory’s chief Rami Abdurrahman said that revenge killings stopped early Saturday.

“This was one of the biggest massacres during the Syrian conflict,” Abdurrahman said about the killings of Alawite civilians.

The previous figure given by the group was more than 600 dead. No official figures have been released.

A funeral was held Saturday afternoon for four Syrian security force members in the northwestern village of Al-Janoudiya after they were killed in the clashes along Syria’s coast. Scores of people attended the funeral.

Syria’s state news agency quoted an unnamed Defense Ministry official as saying that government forces have regained control of much of the areas from Assad loyalists. It added that authorities have closed all roads leading to the coastal region “to prevent violations and gradually restore stability.”

On Saturday morning, the bodies of 31 people killed in revenge attacks the day before in the central village of Tuwaym were laid to rest in a mass grave, residents said. Those killed included nine children and four women, the residents said, sending the AP photos of the bodies draped in white cloth as they were lined in the mass grave.

Lebanese legislator Haidar Nasser, who holds one of the two seats allocated to the Alawite sect in parliament, said that people were fleeing from Syria for safety in Lebanon. He said he didn’t have exact numbers.

Nasser said that many people were sheltering at the Russian air base in Hmeimim, Syria, adding that the international community should protect Alawites who are Syrian citizens loyal to their country. He said that since Assad’s fall, many Alawites were fired from their jobs and some former soldiers who reconciled with the new authorities were killed.

Under Assad, Alawites held top posts in the army and security agencies. The new government has blamed his loyalists for attacks against the country’s new security forces over the past several weeks.

France expressed “its deep concern” over recent violence in Syria. Paris “condemns in the strongest possible terms atrocities committed against civilians on the basis of religion grounds and against prisoners,” its foreign ministry said in a statement Saturday.

France urged Syrian interim authorities to make sure independent investigations “shed full light on these crimes.”

The most recent clashes started when government forces tried to detain a wanted person near the coastal city of Jableh, and were ambushed by Assad loyalists, according to the Observatory.

Omar Albam in Al-Janoudiya, Syria and Sylvie Corbet in Paris contributed to this report.

BEIRUT (AP) — Syria’s embassy in Lebanon suspended consular services Saturday, a day after two relatives of deposed Syrian President Bashar Assad were arrested at the Beirut airport with allegedly forged passports.

Also on Saturday, Lebanese authorities handed over dozens of Syrians — including former officers in the Syrian army under Assad — to the new Syrian authorities after they were caught illegally entering Lebanon, a war monitor and Lebanese officials said.

The embassy announced on its Facebook page that consular work was suspended “until further notice” at the order of the Syrian foreign ministry. The announcement did not give a reason for the suspension.

Two Lebanese security officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly, said the suspension was ordered because the passports belonging to Assad’s relatives — the wife and daughter of one of his cousins — were believed to have been forged at the embassy.

Assad’s uncle, Rifaat Assad — who has been indicted in Switzerland on charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity — had flown out the day before on his real passport and was not stopped, the officials said.

The U.K.-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported Saturday that 70 Syrians, including former army officers, were handed over by a Lebanese security delegation to the security forces of the new Syrian government, led by the former insurgent group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, or HTS. Three Lebanese judicial officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, confirmed the report.

Regional countries have been quick to establish ties with Syria’s new rulers. Delegations of Libyan and Bahraini officials arrived in Damascus on Saturday on official visits.

HTS leader Ahmad al-Sharaa, formerly known as Abu Mohammed al-Golani, has largely succeeded in calming fears within and outside of Syria that his group would unleash collective punishment against communities that supported Assad’s rule or attempt to impose strict Islamic law on the country’s religious minorities.

However, in recent days, sporadic clashes have broken out between the HTS-led security forces and pro-Assad armed groups. The country’s new security forces have launched a series of raids targeting officials affiliated with Assad and have set up checkpoints in areas with significant populations of the Alawite religious minority to which the former president belongs to search for weapons.

There have also been ongoing tensions and clashes in northeastern Syria between Kurdish-led forces and armed groups backed by Turkey. Many Kurds have viewed the new order in Damascus, which appears to have strengthened Turkey’s hand in Syria, with anxiety.

Ankara sees the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces — a key U.S. ally in the fight against the Islamic State group — as an affiliate of its sworn enemy, the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK, which it classifies as a terrorist organization.

The U.S. State Department said Saturday that Secretary of State Antony Blinken had spoken with Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan to “discuss the latest developments in Syria.”

“Secretary Blinken emphasized the need to support a Syrian-led and Syrian-owned political process that upholds human rights and prioritizes an inclusive and representative government,” the statement said, adding that they “also discussed the shared goal of preventing terrorism from endangering the security” of Turkey and Syria.

On Saturday, hundreds of protesters convened by Kurdish women’s groups participated in a demonstration in the northeastern city of Hasaka to demand women’s rights in the new Syria.

Perishan Ramadan, a participant from Hasaka, said the new government “is worse than Bashar” and that its leaders are Islamist extremists who “don’t accept any role for women.”

While the country’s new leaders have not attempted to impose Islamic dress or other conventions, it remains to be seen what role women will have in the new order and whether they will hold political or government positions.

“Women must be present in the new constitution for Syria,” said Rihan Loqo, spokeswoman for the Kongra Star women’s organization. ”… Women’s rights should not be ignored.”

Associated Press writers Hogir Abdo in Hasaka, Syria, and Ellen Knickmeyer in Washington contributed to this report.

MOSCOW (AP) — President Vladimir Putin boasted that his military operation in Ukraine has strengthened Russia and denied that the downfall of a key ally in Syria had dented Moscow’s prestige, as he sought to project strength and ease at his annual news conference and call-in show Thursday.

As is typical, the Russian leader used the tightly choreographed event, which usually lasts hours, to reinforce his authority and demonstrate a sweeping command of everything from consumer prices to military hardware.

He claimed that nearly three years of fighting in Ukraine has hardened the Russian economy and the country’s military and hailed his troops’ gains there.

“Russia has become much stronger over the past two or three years because it has become a truly sovereign country,” he said. “We are standing firm in terms of economy, we are strengthening our defense potential and our military capability now is the strongest in the world.”

Putin, who has held power for nearly a quarter-century, said the military was “advancing toward achieving our goals” in what he calls the special military operation in Ukraine.

In response to a question about a new hypersonic intermediate-range ballistic missile that Russia used for the first time last month to strike Ukraine, Putin scoffed at claims by some Western experts that it could be intercepted by NATO’s air defenses.

He mockingly challenged Ukraine’s Western allies to a “high-tech duel,” suggesting that Moscow could give advance notice of a strike on Kyiv with the Oreshnik missile — and see if the West could protect the city.

“Let them select a target, possibly in Kyiv, put their air defense assets there and we shall strike it with Oreshnik,” he said with a dry smile. “Let’s see what happens.”

Russian troops are making steady, if slow, advances in Ukraine — but the Kremlin has also suffered some embarrassing setbacks. Just this week, a senior Russian general was killed by a bomb outside his apartment building in Moscow. The brazen killing of Lt. Gen. Igor Kirillov, claimed by Ukraine, brought the conflict once again to the streets of the Russian capital.

Moscow’s troops are also battling Ukrainian forces in the Russian region of Kursk, where they have launched an incursion. Asked when they would drive the Ukrainians out, Putin responded that “we will certainly kick them out” but wouldn’t say how long it will take.

In past years, the show, which is broadcast live by state-controlled TV stations across Russia’s 11 time zones, has been heavily dominated by domestic issues, with journalists and ordinary people calling in to ask about road repairs, utility prices and government subsidies. But the Russian leader is particulalry watched for his answers on foreign affairs.

In a flourish typical of the marathon news conferences, he asked people in the audience to unfurl a banner presented to him by marines fighting in Kursk as he answered questions about Ukraine.

Putin said that he was open to possible talks with U.S. President-elect Donald Trump, who has pledged to negotiate a deal to end the hostilities in Ukraine.

“If we meet with Mr. Trump, we will have things to discuss,” he said, without offering specifics.

Putin has previously demanded that Ukraine renounce its bid to join NATO and recognize Russia’s gains. Ukraine and the West have rejected those demands.

In his first comments on Assad’s demise, Putin said that he hadn’t yet met the former Syrian ruler, whom he has given asylum in Moscow. He said that he plans to and will ask him about Austin Tice, an American journalist who went missing in Syria 12 years ago.

“We also can pose the question to people who control the situation on the ground in Syria,” Putin said, in response to a question from NBC’s Keir Simmons, who cited a letter he said Tice’s mother wrote to the Russian leader seeking assistance.

Moscow has quickly sought to establish contacts with the rebels who ousted Assad to secure its diplomatic and military personnel in the country and try to extend the lease on its air and naval bases in the country.

But it’s unclear how much influence Russia will have in Syria going forward.

Assad’s demise has dealt it a painful blow since Russia has fought for nine years to prop up the Syrian leader in the country’s civil war.

Still, Putin denied that the events had weakened Moscow, arguing that it has achieved the goal of destroying “terrorist” groups in the country set when it launched an air campaign in support of Assad in 2015. He claimed that rebel groups that were fighting against Assad have changed and the West is now ready to establish ties with them.

“That means that our goals have been achieved,” Putin said.

Putin added that Russia may keep its military outposts, saying that Moscow has offered the new rulers use of the air and naval bases for humanitarian aid deliveries.

Putin began the session by saying that Russia’s economy is on track to grow by nearly 4% this year. He acknowledged that consumer prices are high, with inflation at 9.3%, but insisted that the economic situation remains “stable.”

The annual show is as much spectacle as news conference. Journalists in the hall near the Kremlin wave colorful signs and placards as they try desperately to attract Putin’s attention.

Russian state media reported that ordinary citizens submitted more than 2 million questions ahead of the show.

JERUSALEM (AP) — Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu entered Syrian territory on Tuesday during a security tour of the buffer zone seized by Israel in the days since the fall of Syrian President Bashar Assad.

It was apparently the first time a sitting Israeli leader entered Syrian territory. Israel seized a swath of southern Syria along the border with the Israeli-annexed Golan Heights, calling it a buffer zone, in the days after Assad was ousted by rebels.

Israel still controls the Golan Heights that it captured from Syria during the 1967 Mideast war and later annexed — a move not recognized by most of the international community.

Netanyau and Defense Minister Israel Katz visited the snow-dusted summit of Mount Hermon, the highest peak in the area, which is located inside Syrian territory.

Katz added that Israel will maintain a presence in the Syrian buffer zone “for as long as is required” and had instructed the Israeli military to quickly establish a presence including fortifications, in anticipation of what could be an extended stay in the area.

“The summit of the Hermon is the eyes of the state of Israel to identify our enemies who are nearby and far away,” Katz said.

Israeli forces were moving to control a roughly 400-square-kilometer (155-square-mile) demilitarized buffer zone in Syrian territory. The buffer zone between Syria and the Israeli-controlled Golan Heights was created by the U.N. after the 1973 Mideast war. A U.N. force of about 1,100 troops has patrolled the area since then.

Mount Hermon is divided between the Israeli-annexed Golan Heights, Lebanon, and Syria. Only the United States recognizes Israel’s control of the Golan Heights.

CNN confirmed Monday that it had been deceived about the identity of a man featured in a viral news report last week appearing to show the moment he was found in a Syrian prison and freed.

The man told CNN he was Adel Gharbal from Homs, and claimed he had been locked up for three months, but a Syrian fact-checking group later cast doubt on those assertions and said it had identified him as Salama Mohammad Salama, an officer of the notorious Syrian Air Force Intelligence Directorate.

CNN told HuffPost earlier on Monday it was investigating if the man gave a “false identity.”

“We can confirm the real identity of the man from our story last Wednesday as Salama Mohammed Salama,” Clarissa Ward, who led the initial report, posted on social media Monday evening.

CNN published an article elaborating on its findings.

“A man who was filmed by CNN being released by rebels from a Damascus jail was a former intelligence officer with the deposed Syrian regime, according to local residents, and not an ordinary citizen who had been imprisoned, as he had claimed,” the opening of the article read.

Salam was found in a jail run by the Syrian Air Force’s intelligence services until Bashar Assad’s regime collapsed on Dec. 8, according to CNN. The network said its team was there to pursue leads on the missing American journalist, Austin Tice.

CNN said a resident of the Bayada neighborhood in Homs provided a photo of Salama apparently on duty in military garb, which CNN found, via facial recognition technology, to be a 99% match with the man in its report.

Locals also told CNN Salama had a reputation for extortion and harassment.

The network said it had been unable to reestablish contact with him.

It noted that Verify-Sy, the Syrian fact-checking organization, had been the first to identify Salama over the weekend. CNN’s findings aligned with what the group reported, though they were more limited.

The group also reported that Salama had been involved in numerous acts of violence and that he had been jailed for less than a month after a “dispute over profit-sharing from extorted funds with a higher-ranking officer.”

After the initial report aired, Ward posted, “In nearly twenty years as a journalist, this was one of the most extraordinary moments I have witnessed.”

According to CNN’s translation, the man told them he had been taken from his home, interrogated about his phone and beaten. He suggested he did not know Assad’s regime had fallen until his shock discovery in the cell. Ward’s team provided him with food and water before he was taken away by workers with a medical relief group.

CNN was accompanied by a guard from the rebel forces, who the network said was the one to approve the man’s release.

CNN says it is investigating the background and identity of a man featured in a stunning recent report appearing to show his discovery in and release from a Syrian prison.

The report, which aired last week, showed CNN’s Clarissa Ward and her team coming across a man in a cell and assisting him out of the facility following the fall of Bashar Assad’s regime.

Ward reported that he identified himself as Adel Gharbal from Homs, and that he said he had been imprisoned for three months. He said he had been taken from his home, interrogated about his phone and asked about “names of terrorists,” per CNN’s translation in the initial report.

Over the weekend, a Syrian fact-checking organization, Verify-Sy, cast doubt on CNN’s reporting, alleging that the man’s name is actually Salama Mohammad Salama, also known as Abu Hamza.

According to Verify-Sy, he was an officer of the brutal Syrian Air Force Intelligence. The fact-checking group accused Salama of involvement in “theft, extortion, and coercing residents [of Homs] into becoming informants.”

Citing interviews with Homs locals, Verify-Sy reported that the man had been incarcerated for less than a month due to a “dispute over profit-sharing from extorted funds with a higher-ranking officer.”

The site alleged that Salama had also been involved in the killings of civilians, and detention and torture of young men on spurious charges in 2014.

HuffPost has not independently verified these claims.

Verify-Sy also questioned the veracity of CNN’s report overall, suggesting the man’s appearance and reactions were incongruous with the conditions he claimed to have been held in.

In a statement, a CNN spokesperson told HuffPost, “No one other than the CNN team was aware of our plans to visit the prison building featured in our report that day.”

“The events transpired as they appear in our film. The decision to release the prisoner featured in our report was taken by the guard – a Syrian rebel,” it continued. “We reported the scene as it unfolded, including what the prisoner told us, with clear attribution.”

The spokesperson said CNN is now investigating the man’s background “and are aware that he may have given a false identity.”

“We are continuing our reporting into this and the wider story,” the statement said.

After a rebel offensive overthrew the Assad regime on Dec. 8, rebel forces began releasing the government’s political prisoners en masse.

CNN initially reported that the prisoner had not been aware Assad’s government had fallen, and that he learned of it when Ward’s team, accompanied by a guard from the rebel forces, discovered him locked in a Damascus prison cell.

Last week, Ward reported they were at the Damascus facility, a prison building at the Syrian air force intelligence headquarters, to do a story about the thousands of Syrians who disappeared into Assad’s prisons, in particular Austin Tice, an American journalist who is still missing after he was detained in Syria more than a decade ago.

DAMASCUS (AP) — Ousted Syrian leader Bashar Assad said Monday he wanted to stay in the country after rebels captured the capital, but the Russian military evacuated him from their base in western Syria after it came under attack.

They were Assad’s first public comments since he was overthrown by insurgent groups just over a week ago following a swift offensive that has shaken up the country’s alliances and led to celebrations in a nation long stifled by civil war.

Meanwhile, a spokesman for the new transitional government told The Associated Press that the new Syria will be inclusive and open to the world.

Assad said on Facebook that he left Damascus on the morning of Dec. 8, hours after insurgents stormed the capital. He said he left in coordination with Russian allies to their Hmeimim air base in the coastal province of Latakia, where he had planned to keep fighting.

But after the Russian base came under attack by drones, he said, the Russians decided to move him that night to Russia.

“At no point during these events did I consider stepping down or seeking refuge nor was such proposal made by any individual or party,” Assad said in the English text of his statement. “The only course of action was to continue fighting against the terrorist onslaught.”

In Damascus, residents dismissed Assad’s comments and some said he had abandoned Syria’s people long ago.

“Is he going to run away from us? He still won’t be able to run away from God,” said one resident, Moataz al-Ahmed, as children stepped on a fallen statue of Assad’s father, Hafez, who had begun the family’s half-century rule.

The spokesman for the transitional government’s political department said in an interview Monday that “the Assad regime is finished with no return” and Russia “should reconsider its presence on Syrian territory as well as its interests.”

The spokesman, Obeida Arnaout, told the AP that Syria has entered a new phase that will be open to the world, and the new government is looking to build good relations with its neighbors and beyond.

He also called on the U.S. and other countries to reconsider the designation of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham — the main rebel group and a former al-Qaida affiliate — as a terrorist organization, calling it “not right and not accurate” designation.

Already, the U.S. has said its officials have been in direct contact with the group.

Syria is home to multiple ethnic and religious communities, often pitted against each other by Assad’s state and years of war. Many of them fear the possibility that Sunni Islamist extremists will take over.

The new leadership also has been in contact with the U.S. to return American citizen Travis Timmerman, who was among the prisoners released from government detention centers when Assad fell, Arnaout said.

“There are political contacts at the highest levels in a way that benefits the Syrian people and that strengthen the current administration,” he said.

Asked whether the new government’s security forces would cooperate with the U.S. to combat remaining militants with the Islamic State group, Arnaout said Syrian factions have ousted and rejected IS and the group no longer has a significant presence in the country.

U.S.-backed, Kurdish-led forces in northeast Syria have been the main U.S. ally in fighting IS and oversee detention centers housing IS militants. However, the future of the Kurds and the semi-autonomous region they control is unclear in the country’s new post-Assad order. Clashes over territory have taken place in some areas between Kurdish forces and the armed groups that overthrew Assad.

Arnaout said the Kurds are part of the Syrian people and their rights will be protected. However, he said the new government will not accept that any part of Syria be outside of Damascus’ control.

“Kurds are one of the components of the Syrian people and we are very keen that this group has its rights protected,” he said. “The social fabric in Syria is a source of strength and not weakness. But we affirm that we don’t any part of Syria to be separated.”

The U.N. envoy for Syria, Geir Pedersen, said Monday he met with HTS leader Ahmed al-Sharaa and was briefed on the challenges and priorities of the Syrian people going forward. Pederson has called for the lifting of international sanctions on Syria to allow for faster rebuilding.

Meanwhile, a U.K.-based war monitor said Israeli airstrikes early Monday hit missile warehouses on the Syrian coast and called it the “most violent strikes” in that part of Syria since 2012.

Israel has been pounding with hundreds of airstrikes what it says are military sites in Syria after the dramatic collapse of Assad’s rule, wiping out air defenses and most of the arsenal of the former Syrian army.

Israeli troops have also seized a border buffer zone, sparking condemnation, with critics accusing Israel of violating the 1974 ceasefire and possibly exploiting the chaos in Syria for a land grab.