DAMASCUS: Gunmen loyal to Syria`s Bashar al-Assad killed 16 security personnel on Thursday, a war monitor said, in attacks it described as the `most violent` since the longtime president`s ouster.

The fighting took place in the Mediterranean coastal province of Latakia, the heartland of the ousted president`s Alawi minority who were considered bastions of support during his rule.

The death toll `following attacks and ambushes by gunmen loyal to Assad in the town of Jableh and its surrounding areas increased to 16 members of the security forces`, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said, adding that the majority of the dead were from the former rebel bastion of Idlib.It said they were `the most violent attacks against the new authorities since Assad was toppled`. At least three of the gunmen in Jableh were killed, said the Britain-based Observatory, which relies on a network of sources inside Syria.

The province`s security director had earlier said that Syrian forces were clashing with gunmen loyal to an Assad-era special forces commander in another village in Latakia, after authorities reportedly launched helicopter strikes.

`The armed groups that our security forces were clashing with in the Latakia countryside were affiliated with the war criminal Suhail al-Hassan, who committed the most heinous massacres against the Syrian people,` the security director told state news agency SANA.

Nicknamed `The Tiger`, Hassan led the country`s special forces and was frequently described as Assad`s `favourite soldier`. He was responsible for key advances by the Assad government in 2015.

The Syrian Observatory forHuman Rights had earlier reported `strikes launched by Syrian helicopters on armed men in the village of Beit Ana and the surrounding forests, coinciding with artillery strikes on a neighbouring village`.

SANA reported that fighter groupsloyalto the ousted president had opened fire on `members and equipment of the defence ministry` near the village, killing one security force member and wounding two. Qatari broadcaster Al Jazeera reported that its photographer Riad al-Hussein was wounded in the clashes but that he was doing well.

A defence ministry source later told SANA that large military reinforcements were being deployed to the Jableh area `to support the security forces and restore stability to the area`.

Deadly attacks Alawi leaders later called in a statement on Facebook for `peaceful protests` in response to the air strikes, which they said had targeted `the homes of civilians`.-AFP