Interim Leader Calls For Peace As Syria Hit By Deadliest Violence In Years

Assad's overthrow ended decades of dynastic rule by his family marked by severe repression and a devastating civil war that began as a peaceful uprising in 2011.

- AJAY JANDYAL

Syrian leader Ahmed Sharaa called for peace on Sunday after hundreds were killed in some of the deadliest violence in 13 years of civil war, pitting loyalists of deposed President Bashar al-Assad against the country's new Islamist rulers.

The clashes, which a war monitoring group said had already killed 1,000 people, mostly civilians, continued for a fourth day in Assad's coastal heartland.

A Syrian security source said the pace of fighting had slowed around the cities of Latakia, Jabla and Baniyas, while forces searched surrounding mountainous areas where an estimated 5,000 pro-Assad insurgents were hiding.

Interim president Sharaa urged Syrians not to let sectarian tensions further destabilise the country.

"We have to preserve national unity and domestic peace, we can live together," Sharaa said in a circulated video, speaking at a mosque in his childhood neighbourhood of Mazzah, in Damascus.