community, AFP correspondents said. Since longtime ruler Bashar al-Assad -- himself an Alawite -- was toppled by an Islamist alliance last December, the community has been the target of attacks, and hundreds of people were killed in sectarian massacres in the area in March.

Protesters in Latakia shouted slogans including "The Syrian people are one" and "To the whole world, listen to us, the Alawites will not bend". Security forces were deployed in the city but did not intervene. "We are one united people. We want armed factions in the region to leave, justice for our martyrs on the coast, and the release of our prisoners... We don't know what they are accused of," said Joumana (58), a lawyer, who declined to provide her family name. People also gathered in other areas. The protests, the biggest in the Alawite regions since Assad's fall, took place after a call on social media by the Supreme Islamic Alawite Council in Syria and Abroad.

That appeal followed a wave of violence against the community in the central city of Homs after a Sunni Muslim Bedouin couple were killed on Sunday, with sectarian graffiti found at the site. After accusations emerged that Alawites were behind the killings, shops and homes were vandalised in districts home to the community, before authorities imposed a curfew and later said the killings were "a criminal act and not sectarian in nature". Protester Mona (25), said that "what happened in Homs is unacceptable". (Bssnews)