It is the worst violence in Syria since rebels toppled Assad in December and installed an Islamist transitional government. A war monitoring group, the British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, said more than 70 people have been killed. A curfew has been imposed in the cities of Latakia and Tartous, where the fighting has broken out.

Syria's interim President Ahmed Sharaa said mass killings of members of ousted President Bashar al-Assad's minority sect were a threat to his mission to unite the country and promised to punish those responsible,