By Musa Mdluli

Syria’s new administration is carrying out a security crackdown against what it has described as “remnants” of former President Bashar al-Assad’s rule, with operations under way in several parts of the country, Aljazeera reported on Saturday evening.

It has been reported that, the official Syrian News Agency SANA reported on Saturday that authorities were conducting “a large-scale sweep operation” near the city of Latakia on Syria’s northwestern coast.

The push-in an area where al-Assad enjoyed support from the Alawite community-came in response to “reports about [the] presence of elements linked to remnants of Assad’s militias”, SANA said in a post shared on social media.

Reporting from the capital Damascus, Al Jazeera’s Hashem Ahelbarra explained that the new administration said it is not targeting the Alawite community, from which al-Assad hailed.

Instead, the authorities said the security operation has focused on soldiers and Syrian army officials associated with al-Assad and his brother, Maher al-Assad, a powerful former military commander.

“They say that [they’ve] issued an ultimatum to those people to hand over weapons to the new administration,” Ahelbarra reported, adding that operations also were being carried out in Homs, Aleppo and on the outskirts of Damascus.