Syrian security forces used gunfire on Tuesday to break up two rival groups of demonstrators in the coastal town of Latakia, heartland of the country’s Alawite minority, witnesses and officials said.

Syria has been rocked by several episodes of sectarian violence since longtime leader Bashar al-Assad, who hails from the Muslim Alawite minority, was ousted by a rebel offensive last year and replaced by a Sunni-led government.

Witnesses said hundreds of Alawite protesters had gathered to demand a decentralized political system in Syria and the release of men they say were unjustly detained by the country’s new authorities. Supporters of the government then gathered and began shouting insults at the Alawites.

About an hour into the Alawites’ rally, gunshots were heard in Agriculture Square, one of two town squares where the protesters had gathered, according to two witnesses and videos verified by Reuters. One of the verified videos showed a man lying motionless on the ground with a wound to the head.

There was no immediate official word on casualties.

Noureddine el-Brimo, the head of media relations in Latakia province, told Reuters security forces had fired into the air to disperse the rival protesters, and added that unknown assailants had also fired on civilians and on the security forces.

He gave no further details but witnesses said both protests had broken up by the afternoon.

‘THERE’S NO MORE SECURITY’

The rally had been called for by the head of the Supreme Alawite Islamic Council, Ghazal Ghazal, on Monday. He urged Alawites to protest peacefully.

“We demand to live in security, to go to school safely without kidnapping. This was the only place we used to feel security. Now there’s no more security and we’re exposed to kidnapping and fear,” said Leen, who attended the protest but declined to give her last name out of security concerns.

Nearly 1,500 Alawites were killed by government-linked forces in March after Assad loyalists ambushed state security. Reuters reported that dozens of Alawite women were later kidnapped, though authorities deny they were abducted.

Syria‘s President Ahmed al-Sharaa, a former militant Islamist, has vowed to rule for all Syrians but the country’s nearly 14-year civil war and the bouts of violence over the last year have prompted fears of further instability.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said on Tuesday that Kyiv was ready to move forward with a US-backed peace deal, and that he was prepared to discuss its sensitive points with US President Donald Trump in talks he said should include European allies.

In a speech to the so-called coalition of the willing, a copy of which was seen by Reuters, Zelenskiy urged European leaders to hash out a framework for deploying a “reassurance force” to Ukraine and to continue supporting Kyiv for as long as Moscow shows no willingness to end its war.

Ukraine had signaled earlier in the day support for the framework of a peace deal with Russia but stressed that sensitive issues needed to be fixed at a meeting between Zelenskiy and Trump.

Kyiv’s message hinted that an intense diplomatic push by the Trump administration could be yielding some fruit but any optimism could be short-lived, especially as Russia stressed it would not let any deal stray too far from its own objectives.

US and Ukrainian negotiators held talks on the latest US-backed peace plan in Geneva on Sunday. US Army Secretary Dan Driscoll then met on Monday and Tuesday with Russian officials in Abu Dhabi, a spokesperson for Driscoll said.

US and Ukrainian officials have been trying to narrow the gaps between them over the plan to end Europe’s deadliest and most devastating conflict since World War II, with Ukraine wary of being strong-armed into accepting a deal largely on the Kremlin’s terms, including territorial concessions.

“Ukraine – after Geneva – supports the framework’s essence, and some of the most sensitive issues remain as points for the discussion between presidents,” a Ukrainian official said.

Zelenskiy could visit the United States in the next few days to finalize a deal with Trump, Kyiv’s national security chief Rustem Umerov said, though no such trip was confirmed from the US side.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said on X that over the past week the US had made “tremendous progress towards a peace deal by bringing both Ukraine and Russia to the table.” She added: “There are a few delicate, but not insurmountable, details that must be sorted out and will require further talks between Ukraine, Russia, and the United States.”

Oil prices extended an earlier decline after reports of Ukraine potentially agreeing to a war-ending deal.

Underlining the high stakes for Ukraine, its capital Kyiv was hit by a barrage of missiles and hundreds of drones overnight in a Russian strike that killed at least seven people and again disrupted power and heating systems. Residents were sheltering underground wearing winter jackets, some in tents.

ZELENSKIY: WILL DISCUSS SENSITIVE ISSUES WITH TRUMP

US policy towards the war has zigzagged in recent months.

A hastily arranged summit between Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin in Alaska in August raised worries in Kyiv and European capitals that the Trump administration might accept many Russian demands, though the meeting ultimately resulted in more US pressure on Russia.

The 28-point plan that emerged last week caught many in the US government, Kyiv, and Europe alike off-guard and prompted fresh concerns that the Trump administration might be willing to push Ukraine to sign a peace deal heavily tilted toward Moscow.

The plan would require Kyiv to cede territory beyond the almost 20% of Ukraine that Russia has captured since its February 2022 full-scale invasion, as well as accept curbs on its military and bar it from ever joining NATO – conditions Kyiv has long rejected as tantamount to surrender.

The sudden push has raised the pressure on Ukraine and Zelenskiy, who is now at his most vulnerable since the start of the war after a corruption scandal saw two of his ministers dismissed, and as Russia makes battlefield gains.

Zelenskiy could struggle to get Ukrainians to swallow a deal viewed as selling out their interests.

He said on Monday the latest peace plan incorporated “correct” points after talks in Geneva. “The sensitive issues, the most delicate points, I will discuss with President Trump,” Zelenskiy said in his nightly video address.

Zelenskiy said the process of producing a final document would be difficult. Russia‘s unrelenting attacks on Ukraine have left many skeptical about how peace can be achieved soon.

“There was a very loud explosion, our windows were falling apart, we got dressed and ran out,” said Nadiia Horodko, a 39-year-old accountant, after a residential building was struck in Kyiv overnight.

“There was horror, everything was already burning here, and a woman was screaming from the eighth floor, ‘Save the child, the child is on fire!’”

MACRON WARNS AGAINST EUROPEAN CAPITULATION

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said an amended peace plan must reflect the “spirit and letter” of an understanding reached between Putin and Trump at their Alaska summit.

“If the spirit and letter of Anchorage is erased in terms of the key understandings we have established then, of course, it will be a fundamentally different situation [for Russia],” Lavrov warned.

A group of countries supporting Ukraine, which is known as the coalition of the willing and includes Britain and France, was also set to hold a virtual meeting on Tuesday.

“It’s an initiative that goes in the right direction: peace. However, there are aspects of that plan that deserve to be discussed, negotiated, improved,” French President Emmanuel Macron told RTL radio regarding the US-proposed plan. “We want peace, but we don’t want a peace that would be a capitulation.”

In a separate development, Romania scrambled fighter jets to track drones that breached its territory near the border with Ukraine early on Tuesday, and one was still advancing deeper into the NATO-member country, the defense ministry said.

Victims of Hamas‘s Oct. 7, 2023, invasion of and massacre across southern Israel sued Binance and its founder Changpeng Zhao, accusing them of facilitating millions of dollars in payments to the Islamist group and other US-designated terrorist organizations.

According to a complaint made public on Monday, the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange laundered money for Hamas even after pleading guilty in November 2023 and paying a $4.32 billion criminal penalty for violating federal anti-money-laundering and sanctions laws.

The plaintiffs include 306 American victims of Hamas‘s attack, including relatives of people killed, injured or taken hostage, and subsequent attacks by various groups.

They accused Binance of knowingly enabling Hamas, Hezbollah, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps to move more than $1 billion through its platform, including more than $50 million after the Oct. 7 attack.

Zhao pleaded guilty to anti-money-laundering violations in connection with Binance‘s plea and served a four-month prison sentence. US President Donald Trump pardoned him on Oct. 23.

“Binance intentionally structured itself as a refuge for illicit activity,” the complaint said. “To this day, there is no indication that Binance has meaningfully altered its core business model.”

In a statement, Binance declined to discuss the lawsuit but said “we comply fully with internationally recognized sanctions laws.”  A lawyer representing Zhao in related litigation declined to comment.

The lawsuit seeks compensatory and triple damages, among other remedies.

BIG TRANSACTIONS LINKED TO BRAZILIAN LIVESTOCK OPERATOR

According to the complaint, large sums of cryptocurrency went through accounts of people with no obvious financial means to explain them.

They allegedly included a Venezuelan woman who appeared to operate a Brazilian livestock-related company, Fazenda Amazonia, or Amazonia Farm in English.

Her account, opened in 2022 when she was 26, allegedly received more than $177 million in deposits, and more than $130 million in withdrawals were made, the complaint said.

“When a company chooses profit over even the most basic counterterrorism obligations, it must be held accountable – and it will be,” Lee Wolosky, a lawyer for the plaintiffs, said in a statement.

The complaint was filed in North Dakota federal court. It said at least two suspicious transactions went through online addresses in Kindred, North Dakota, which has about 1,000 people.

Binance and Zhao are separately defending against a lawsuit by other attack victims in Manhattan federal court. The lawsuit claims they provided a “clandestine” funding mechanism for Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad to raise money and transact illegal business for several years.

A judge rejected the defendants’ motion to dismiss that case in February.