CAIRO/AMMAN: Syrian leader Ahmed Sharaa called for peace on Sunday after hundreds were killed in coastal areas in the worst communal violence since the fall of Bashar al Assad.
“We have to preserve national unity and domestic peace, we can live together,” Sharaa, the interim president, said as clashes continued between forces linked to the new Islamist rulers and fighters from Assad’s Alawite sect.
“Rest assured about Syria, this country has the characteristics for survival,” Sharaa said in a circulated video, speaking at a mosque in his childhood neighbourhood of Mazzah in Damascus. “What is currently happening in Syria is within the expected challenges.”