Video of Syria hospital killing revives calls for independent Sweida probe

L'Orient-Le Jour

7 hours ago

Syrian rights activists renewed their calls for an independent investigation into violence last month in Druze-majority Sweida province after footage emerged Sunday appearing to show government forces killing a volunteer medic in a hospital.
The week of bloodshed began on July 13 with clashes between local Druze fighters and Bedouin tribes, but the violence rapidly escalated as it drew in outside forces, eventually killing some 1,400 people, many of them Druze civilians, according to a war monitor.
Syrian authorities have said their forces intervened to stop the clashes, but witnesses, Druze factions and the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights have accused them of siding with the Bedouin and committing abuses against the Druze, including summary executions.
Brutal videos have previously circulated on social media, with some appearing to show civilians killed at the hands of armed men in military or security forces uniforms.
Local news outlet Suwayda 24 on Sunday published what it said was surveillance footage from the main hospital in Sweida city on July 16, showing a group of people who appear to be staff crouched on the floor in a corridor.
Several armed men are seen standing in front of the group, most wearing military garb and one dressed in an interior ministry uniform.
A brief scuffle breaks out with a man who Suwayda 24 identified as "one of the volunteers with the medical team" at the hospital.
The forces then shoot the man, whose body is dragged off, leaving a smear of blood.
The Syrian authorities did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
One 30-year-old man who appears in the video told AFP by telephone that he had responded to the hospital's call for volunteers and confirmed that "the incident occurred on July 16."
A doctor at the hospital, speaking on condition of anonymity, also confirmed to AFP that the video was taken inside the facility.
'Shocking' execution
The observatory also published the footage, calling it a "shocking field execution" carried out by "members of the defence and interior ministries."
It urged accountability and "an independent, impartial international commission of inquiry" into the violence in Sweida.
Fadel Abdul Ghany, head of the Syrian Network for Human Rights, urged authorities to act immediately and called on an existing U.N. body tasked with looking into rights abuses in Syria to "investigate the violations committed by all parties involved in Sweida."
In a statement on X, he said a committee announced by the authorities last month to investigate the Sweida violence "lacks credibility."
Mohammad al-Abdallah, executive director of the Syria Justice and Accountability Centre, said U.N. investigators "must enter Sweida immediately," noting medical personnel should be protected under international law.
Others also took to social media to call for accountability, including Samih Choukaer, a prominent Syrian Druze musician who strongly opposed now-ousted ruler Bashar al-Assad.
"In a country that respects itself, every video documenting these crimes is in itself enough to bring down a government," he wrote.