The gunmen were methodical, beginning their rampage from the start of a street in the Qusoor neighborhood in the Syrian coastal city of Baniyas and working their way down the block, building by building, home by home, before they got to Abu Ali's apartment.

The first ones to die were Abu Ali's neighbors, a contractor named Ibrahim Al-Iss and his wife. Then came Ibrahim Nuzha, a doctor, and his two sisters, Nour and Hazar, and their mother, Wahibah Salloum. After that were Abu Ali's sister, Sahar, and her two sons, Fares and Firas. Then his next-door neighbor, Munther Ali, and his wife, Fatima. All shot with a swift bullet to the head.

The gunmen knocked on Abu Ali's door. When he opened it, they placed the AK-47 on his chest and asked him for his name.

"The only reason I escaped was I managed to convince them I was Sunni and not an Alawite," he said.

The events in Baniyas, as recounted by activists, victims' relatives and local news reports, were part of a violent spasm of bloodletting over the last three days in Syria's coastal areas that saw hundreds of people — most of them civilians — killed in clashes between forces with the country's new Islamist leadership and militants affiliated with the former government of Syrian President Bashar Assad.

The battles represent the deadliest attack on the new government's forces since Assad's ouster in December, and a blood-soaked reminder of the sectarian tensions that are the legacy of the country's 14-year civil war. They also raise fresh questions as to the ability of the government, led by interim President Ahmad al-Sharaa, to stop the country from devolving into an all-out sectarian war.

The bulk of the fighting took place in Latakia and Tartus, coastal provinces that are the heartland of Syria's Alawites, a minority sect that constitutes roughly 10% of the population but whose members formed the backbone of the army and security forces under Assad. Attacks also spread to mixed-sect communities in Homs and Hama.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a U.K.-based war monitor with a network of activists in Syria, said more than 700 people were killed, including 532 civilians, who it said were executed in a wave of sectarian-fueled revenge killings.

Another war monitor, the Syrian Network for Human Rights, said that more than 240 people were killed Thursday and Friday, including 125 civilians Friday alone in executions committed by security forces.

Authorities blamed the unrest on armed remnants of the Assad government, but acknowledged that some of the civilian killings were the fault of undisciplined factions or individual actors.

"Remnants of the former regime sought to test the new Syria," Al-Sharaa said in a televised address Friday, calling on the gunmen to lay down their arms.

"You attacked all Syrians and thus committed an unforgivable sin. The response has come, and you have not been able to withstand it."

The bloodshed underscores fears the new authorities will be unable to contain the violence and bring stability to Syria, a country devastated by conflict since 2011.

Reports of sectarian-fueled massacres prompted international opprobrium from a raft of regional and Western governments, along with the United Nations and a number of human rights groups.

It also drew comments from Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz, who said that Al-Sharaa "removed the mask, revealing his true face: a jihadist terrorist from the al-Qaeda school, committing atrocities against the Alawite civilian population."

"Israel will defend itself against any threat from Syria," he said, adding that the Israeli military would remain in the areas of Syria it occupies and that Israel would not allow Syrian government troops to enter the country's south.

The violence was triggered Thursday afternoon, when a convoy of government troops entered a village near the coastal city of Jableh to apprehend Assad-linked figures. After an altercation with the villagers, the convoy left and came under fire from a neighboring village that left 16 government fighters dead.

That appeared to have been the start of a wider onslaught by Assad loyalists, who launched coordinated attacks on government positions in the country's northwest, killing and imprisoning members of the security forces.

Soon after those attacks, a former Assad government officer with a group calling itself the Shield of the Coast Brigade released a video calling on Syrians to reject the new government. Meanwhile, protests broke out in Alawite-dominated areas.

The government responded with a wider call to arms that saw thousands of men from government-allied armed factions deploy to the coast. It also used artillery and scrambled helicopters to attack and bomb areas held by remnants of the Assad forces that some activists said hit civilian homes. One widely shared video — which was not verified by the Los Angeles Times — purports to show government-affiliated gunmen dropping improvised munitions, an echo of the Assad government's practices.

A number of those factions then engaged in a pogrom against Alawite civilians, residents and activists said.

One video published on social media shows gunmen nonchalantly shooting unarmed men crawling on the ground in a village in Latakia province. Another depicts a gunman chasing after what appears to be a civilian, first shooting him in the foot, then the leg, then the chest. Yet another shows a fighter torturing older Alawite men, ordering them to bark for the camera. A video from the village of Mukhtariya shows bodies lined up on the streets, some without their clothes — all civilians, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

The videos could not be verified by The Times, but activists said the locations appeared to comport with rural villages near Syria's coast.

"As I'm talking to you now, the corpse of my niece's husband is in her home. They executed him in front of the family and no one can come to even console her," said Adnan, whose family members reside in the Qusoor neighborhood and who said that all Alawite residents in the building were killed by government-affiliated gunmen. He withheld his last name for fear of reprisals.

After the rampage, fighters began systematically looting and burning homes and stealing cars, Abu Ali and activists said. Local news reports said 200,000 vehicles were stolen amid the violence.

"After they shot my sister, I heard them loading up the fridge and washing machine from her home and driving away," Abu Ali said. He sent photos of the corpses of his next-door neighbors and his sister and her children in their homes.

The violence triggered a wave of displacement from Alawite-dominated areas, with thousands of fighting-age men escaping to the hills to avoid the same fate as their co-religionists. Others fled to the Russian base in the Hmeimim near Jableh, begging guards for protection before they were allowed in. Meanwhile, relatives published on social media the names and pictures of those killed in the violence. Others reported frantic calls from family members and friends trying to find some way to leave the country.

Although many Alawites were relieved at Assad's fall in December, many have remained at a distance from Syria's new leaders. As members of the Assad-era security services, Alawites engaged in some of the worst violations against those opposing Assad's rule; many now fear retribution from Sunni hard-line factions that are part of post-Assad forces.

Late last year, the government began a countrywide reconciliation drive meant to regularize the status of Assad-linked personnel. But it has since dissolved the security services and fired public officials, leaving a vast number of Alawites without employment.

By Saturday evening, the government said it had regained control of the situation and ordered allied factions to withdraw.

It also said that it would conduct "fair trials" for all who committed violations during the operation, and that it had arrested those "who stole personal property during recent events."

"Those who bet on chaos do not yet realize that the era of tyranny has ended," said a statement from the Syrian Ministry of Defense on Saturday.

"For those who have yet to understand this, we will clarify it for them once more" on the battlefield, it said.

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