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Rebels seeking to topple Assad have in the past sought to
bring their four-year-long insurgency close to coastal areas in
government-held Latakia, heartland of Assad's minority Alawite
community.
An army source told state news agency SANA fighter jets hit
insurgent hideouts in the northern Latakia countryside with
"tens killed and wounded." Latakia is the main port in Syria and
along with the capital Damascus is one of the most important
government-held areas in the country.
The violence follows advances in neighboring Idlib province by
the hardline Ahrar al-Sham group and Syria's al Qaeda wing Nusra
Front as well as other allied fighters.
Rami Abdulrahman, who runs the Syrian Observatory for Human
Rights monitoring group, said the Latakia battles started with
an army offensive on Thursday, backed by local militias, aimed
at pushing the insurgents out of the province in order to
advance on captured areas of neighboring Idlib.
The Observatory, which collects information from a network of
sources on the ground, said at least five insurgents were killed
and an unidentified number from the pro-government side.
Two rebel sources said the fighting in Latakia was near the
mountains of Jabal al-Akrad, close to some of the highest peaks
in Syria including Nabi Younis that overlook Alawite villages
and close to Qardaha, hometown of the Assad family.
"The capture of the peaks would make the Alawite villages in our
firing range," said an Ahrar al-Sham commander based in Idlib on
Skype.
The Observatory's Abdulrahman said the army wanted to secure the
valley and peaks in order to advance on Jisr al-Shughour, a town
in Idlib province captured by insurgents a week ago.
In August 2013, Islamist rebels and foreign fighters briefly
captured Alawite villages.
On Friday Syrian television said army units targeted "groups of
terrorists" in the eastern and southern Idlib countryside and
"eliminated a great number of them and destroyed their weapons
and munitions."
Diplomats say rebels are trying to pressure the overstretched
army on as many fronts as possible to spread its resources ever
more thinly.
(Reporting by Suleiman Al-Khalidi in Amman and Sylvia Westall in
Beirut; Editing by Dominic Evans)
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