Snipers shot dead a soldier and wounded another in Syria’s flashpoint city of Banias yesterday, state news agency Sana said, a day after a deal was struck for the army to restore order there.

The killing comes nearly a month after nationwide protests broke out calling for greater freedom, political reform and the lifting of a draconian emergency law, which have been harshly suppressed by security forces.

It also comes amid claims that several people freed after detention in Banias alleged they were tortured.

“A group of snipers opened fire on soldiers as they were on patrol in Banias,” Sana said. “One soldier was killed and another wounded by this criminal gang,” it added, without identifying the attackers.

Earlier yesterday, London-based Syrian rights activist Rami Abdel Rahman said “there was a deal on Wednesday between Syrian officials and city residents for the army to enter Banias imminently to restore order”.

“Security agents will refrain from patrolling neighbourhoods to make arrests, and the hundreds of people arrested in Banias will be released,” Abdel Rahman, head of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR), said by telephone.

“Elements of armed gangs,” some of whom he said were close to security and intelligence services and “have caused unrest in order to create dissension, will be prosecuted”, he said.

And “security officers who failed to stop the unrest and brought Banias to the brink of a confessional war will be punished too,” Abdel Rahman said.

Banias is a Mediterranean port city home to Sunnis and Alawite Muslims, as well as Christians.

Security forces have encircled Banias, 280 kilometres northwest of Damascus, since deadly clashes there on Sunday.

Government forces killed at least four people and wounded 17 when they strafed a residential area of the town with gunfire for hours, witnesses said.

And nine soldiers were later killed when their patrol was ambushed outside the town, the official Sana news agency said.