Syria’s New Government Steps Up Pursuit of Assad Loyalists

Syria’s new administration has stepped up its campaign to track down and arrest members of the ousted regime of Bashar al-Assad, signaling that it would act with a heavy hand against people suspected of atrocities against Syrians.

Sana, the state-run Syrian news agency, reported on Saturday that “a number of remnants of the Assad militias” were arrested in the coastal Latakia region in western Syria. It said that weapons and ammunitions were confiscated.

The new administration, which has tried to assert its authority over Syria since an alliance of rebels toppled Mr. al-Assad three weeks ago, has signaled that pursuing loyalists of the Assad dictatorship is a top priority. But the leader of a prominent human rights organization has raised alarm about the way in which the transitional government was going after Assad loyalists, saying it was carrying out arbitrary arrests of supporters of the old regime.

Over the past few days, Sana has also reported that government security forces were pursuing members of the Assad regime in the regions of Tartus, Homs and Hama.

On Wednesday, an attempt to arrest Mohammed Kanjou al-Hassan, the former director of military justice under Mr. al-Assad, set off deadly clashes in the Tartus area — part of the heartland of Mr. al-Assad’s Alawite minority. Security forces were ambushed by loyalists of the former government in the area, according to the Britain-based war monitoring group, Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

Fourteen members of the government forces were killed, according to Mohammed Abdel Rahman, Syria’s interim interior minister.