Jihadist forces in Syrian are conducting an operation in the central Syrian city of Homs, Sana news agency reports, focusing on the Alawite districts from which the Assad dynasty originated.

“The Interior Ministry, in cooperation with the military operations service, is launching a large-scale operation in the districts of Homs city,” a security services spokesman told the Syrian news agency.

According to the statement, the targets of the operation are “war criminals and persons involved in crimes who refused to hand in their weapons and register at registration and integration centers, also “fugitives, hidden arsenals…”

Since the fall of the Assad regime, the leadership of the jihadist rebel forces in Damascus have been registering conscripts and ex-soldiers and asking them to surrender their weapons, while accusations rise of a brutal cleansing of Alawites and Levantine Christians.

“The Ministry of Interior calls on the residents of Wadi al-Dahab and Akrama districts (…) to remain in their homes and fully cooperate with our forces,” the statement said.

“The operation is being carried out in two Alawi districts,” Rami Abdelrahman, director of the non-governmental organisation Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, told AFP. “The operation is aimed at searching for former members of the Shabiha (pro-government militias) and the organisers and participants in last week’s Alawite demonstrations, which the new leadership sees as manifestations of a challenge to its authority.”

On December 25, thousands of people demonstrated in several areas of Syria after the publication of a video showing an attack on an Alawite shrine in northern Syria.

Syria’s new authorities have repeatedly tried to reassure the country’s minorities by assuring them that they will not be persecuted, but Alawites fear reprisals as a religious minority and also because of its connection to the Assad family.