Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa called for national unity and peace on Sunday, after hundreds of civilians were reportedly killed along the country's Mediterranean coast in the worst violence since the overthrow of Bashar al-Assad.
Clashes between the new security forces and loyalists of the former government erupted on Thursday in the heartland of the Alawite minority to which Assad belongs, and have since escalated into reported mass killings.
"We must preserve national unity and civil peace as much as possible and, God willing, we will be able to live together in this country," Sharaa said from a mosque in Damascus.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights war monitor has reported that 745 Alawite civilians were killed in the coastal Latakia and Tartus provinces.
The Britain-based Observatory said they were killed in "executions" carried out by security personnel or pro-government fighters and were followed by looting.
The fighting has also killed 125 members of the security forces and 148 pro-Assad fighters, according to the Observatory, taking the overall death toll to 1,018.
The interior ministry said on Sunday that government forces were conducting "sweeping operations in Qadmous and the surrounding villages" in Tartus province to "pursue the remnants of the toppled regime".
State news agency SANA quoted a defence ministry source as saying there were violent clashes ongoing in Tanita, another Tartus village.
An AFP photographer in the city of Latakia reported a military convoy entering the Bisnada neighbourhood to search homes.
In Baniyas, a city to the south, resident Samir Haidar, 67, told AFP two of his brothers and his nephew were killed by armed groups that entered people's homes, adding that there were "foreigners among them".
Though himself an Alawite, Haidar was part of the leftist opposition to the Assads and was imprisoned for more than a decade under their rule.
Defence ministry spokesman Hassan Abdul Ghani said on Saturday the security forces had "reimposed control" over areas that had seen attacks by Assad loyalists.
Education Minister Nazir al-Qadri announced that schools would remain shut on Sunday and Monday in both Latakia and Tartus, while SANA reported a power outage throughout Latakia province due to attacks on the grid by Assad loyalists.
The killings followed clashes sparked by the arrest of a wanted suspect in a predominantly Alawite village, the Observatory reported.
The monitor said there had been a "relative return to calm" in the region on Saturday.
A defence ministry source told SANA that troops had blocked roads leading to the coast to prevent "violations", without specifying who was committing them.
Latakia province security director Mustafa Kneifati told the news agency: "We will not allow for sedition or the targeting of any component of the Syrian people."
Sharaa's Islamist group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), which led the lightning offensive that toppled Assad in December, has its roots in the Syrian branch of Al-Qaeda and remains proscribed as a terrorist organisation by many governments including the United States.
Since the rebel victory, it has moderated its rhetoric and vowed to protect Syria's religious and ethnic minorities.
The Alawite heartland has been gripped by fear of reprisals for the Assad family's brutal rule, which included widespread torture and disappearances.
Social media users have shared posts documenting the killing of Alawite friends and relatives.
The Observatory, which relies on a network of sources in Syria, has reported multiple "massacres" in recent days, with women and children among the dead.
The Observatory and activists released footage showing dozens of bodies in civilian clothing piled outside a house, with blood stains nearby and women wailing.
Other videos appeared to show men in military garb shooting people at close range.
AFP could not independently verify the images or accounts.
During a sermon on Sunday, the Greek Orthodox Patriarch of Antioch John X said Christians were among those killed, and called on Sharaa to "put a stop to these massacres... and give a sense of safety and security to all the people of Syria, regardless of their sects".
The majority of those killed were "innocent, unarmed civilians" and not "regime remnants", he said.
The new government lacks the tools, incentives and local support base to engage with disgruntled Alawites, he said.
"All they have is repressive power, and a lot of that is made up of jihadist zealots who think Alawites are enemies of God."