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Irish Times
18-07-2025
- Politics
- Irish Times
Syria's president accuses Israel of seeking ‘endless chaos' as his forces pull back
Syrian government forces began withdrawing from a restive southern province as president Ahmed al-Sharaa sought to restore calm after days of deadly sectarian clashes and Israeli strikes against the Arab state. In a hardening of his rhetoric against Syria's southern neighbour, Mr Sharaa accused Israel of seeking to foment 'endless chaos'. He said Syria faced a choice between 'open war with the Israeli entity' or handing security in the Sweida province over to factions from the country's Druze minority . 'We are not those who fear war . . . However, we prioritised the interests of Syrians over chaos and destruction,' he said during an address aired on state television on Thursday. [ Who are the Druze - and why does Israel say it is striking Syria for their benefit Opens in new window ] 'The optimal choice at this stage was to make a careful decision to protect the unity of our homeland and the safety of its people, based on the supreme national interest.' READ MORE Sweida residents and people familiar with Mr Sharaa's decisions said government forces had begun withdrawing overnight. A wounded man receives treatment at a hospital in Syria's southern city of Sweida on Friday. Photograph: Shadi Al-Dubaisi/AFP Mr Sharaa announced the moves hours after Israel escalated its campaign of air strikes on Syria, bombing the defence ministry in the heart of Damascus and carrying out another strike near the presidential palace in the Syrian capital. The strikes on Damascus killed at least three people, according to Syrian officials. Syria's state news agency, Sana, said Israel carried out another air strike near Sweida city at around 10.45pm on Thursday. The US, which has in recent weeks recognised Mr Sharaa's government and lifted Assad-era sanctions on Syria, has sought to broker an end to this week's conflict. US state department spokesperson Tammy Bruce on Thursday said the US 'did not support recent Israeli strikes' and 'unequivocally condemns this violence'. 'All parties must step back and engage in meaningful dialogue that leads to a lasting ceasefire,' she said, adding: 'We are engaging diplomatically with Israel and Syria at the highest levels, both to address the present crisis and reach a lasting agreement between the two sovereign states.' Bedouin fighters gather in front a burning shop. Photograph: Ghaith Alsayed/AP Israel began launching air strikes against Syrian security forces in Sweida on Monday after an eruption of fighting between Druze militias and Bedouin tribes that escalated after Syrian government forces deployed to the southern province and were drawn into the conflict. Israel said it had intervened to protect the Druze community, which it has actively sought to court, and to ensure southern Syria areas bordering the Jewish state are demilitarised. Prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu on Thursday said: 'That will also be our policy going forward – we will not allow Syrian army forces to enter the region south of Damascus, and will not allow any harm to the Druze.' Syria's government announced a renewed ceasefire in Sweida on Wednesday, as a previous one declared a day earlier collapsed. The latest ceasefire appeared to be holding as of Thursday morning. The fighting and Israel's strikes underscored Sharaa's struggle to stabilise and unify the fragile state eight months after he led a rebel offensive that toppled Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad. A damaged car and house in the Sweida countryside, southern Syria, where fighters from Bedouin tribes continued to roam on Friday. Photograph: EPA Druze militias, which have been the dominant forces in Sweida, have refused to be integrated into the nascent government's new national security forces. Israel has also used the security vacuum to seize a swath of territory in southern Syria and launch repeated strikes against military infrastructure in the Arab state. Activists described scenes of carnage in Sweida city, with government forces and Druze militias accused of killings and rights violations. In an effort to ease the spiralling crisis, Mr Sharaa stressed in his address that the Druze were integral to the Syrian state, and 'protecting your rights and freedom is one of our priorities'. He added the government had 'decided to assign some local factions and religious sheikhs the responsibility of maintaining security in Sweida'. Mr Sharaa's government has said it does not want conflict with its neighbours and had been holding talks with Israel to ease tensions before the latest outbreak of violence. Arab and Turkish officials have repeatedly criticised Israel's attacks in Syria, saying they undermine efforts to stabilise the country after the 14-year civil war. Late on Thursday evening, the foreign ministers of the Gulf states Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon and Iraq issued a joint statement condemning the 'repeated' Israeli attacks and saying they 'support Syria's security, unity, stability and sovereignty, and reject all outside interferences in its affairs'. – Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2025
Al Arabiya
18-07-2025
- Politics
- Al Arabiya
Syria's Druze find bodies in the streets while searching for loved ones
A Syrian Druze woman living in the United Arab Emirates frantically tried to keep in touch with her family in her hometown in southern Syria as clashes raged there over the past days. Her mother, father, and sister sent videos of their neighbors fleeing as fighters moved in. The explosions from shelling were nonstop, hitting near their house. Her family took shelter in the basement. When she reached them later in a video call, they said her father was missing. He had gone out during a lull to check the situation and never returned. 'Now I only pray. That's all I can do,' she told The Associated Press at the time. Hours later, they learned he had been shot and killed by a sniper. The woman spoke on condition of anonymity, fearing that using her name would put her surviving family and friends at risk. A ceasefire went into effect late Wednesday, easing days of brutal clashes in Sweida. Now, members of its Druze community who fled or went into hiding are returning to search for loved ones and count their losses. They are finding homes looted and bloodied bodies of civilians in the streets. The fighting began with tit-for-tat kidnappings and attacks between local Sunni Bedouin tribes and Druze militias in the majority-Druze Sweida province. Government forces that intervened to restore order clashed with the Druze militias but also, in some cases, attacked civilians. At least 600 people – combatants and civilians on both sides – were killed in four days of clashes, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based war monitor. It said the dead included more than 80 civilians, mostly Druze, who were rounded up by fighters and collectively shot to death in what the monitor called field executions. 'These are not individual acts but systemic,' the Observatory's director, Rami Abdul-Rahman, told the AP. 'All the violations are there. You can see from the bodies that are all over the streets in Sweida clearly show they're shot in the head.' In response, Druze militias have targeted Bedouin families in revenge attacks since the ceasefire was reached. Footage shared on Syrian state media shows Bedouin families putting their belongings in trucks and fleeing, with reports of renewed skirmishes in those areas. There was no word on casualties in those attacks. Most of the Syrian Druze who spoke to the AP requested anonymity, fearing they and their families could be targeted. The Druze religious sect is an offshoot of Ismailism, a branch of Shiite Islam. More than half of the roughly 1 million Druze worldwide live in Syria. The others live in Lebanon and Israel, including in the Golan Heights, which Israel captured from Syria in the 1967 Mideast War and annexed in 1981. They largely celebrated the downfall in December of Syrian autocrat Bashar al-Assad but were divided over interim President Ahmad al-Sharaa's Sunni extremist rule. The latest violence has left the community more skeptical of Syria's new leadership and doubtful of peaceful coexistence. One Syrian-American Druze told the AP of his fear as he watched the clashes from the United States and tried to account for his family and friends, whom he had seen in a recent trip to his native city, Sweida. Despite internet and communications breakdowns, he tracked down his family. His mother and brother fled because their home was shelled and raided, he said. Their belongings were stole, windows shattered. Their neighbors' house was burned down. Two other neighbors were killed, one by shelling, another by stray bullets, he said. He also pored over online videos of the fighting, finding a harrowing footage. It showed gunmen in military uniform forcing a number of men in civilian clothes to kneel in the street in a well-known roundabout in Sweida. The gunmen then spray the men with automatic fire, their bodies dropping to the ground. The footage was seen by the AP. To his horror, he recognized the men. One was a close family friend – another Syrian-American on a visit to Sweida from the US. The others were the friend's brother, father, three uncles, and a cousin. Friends he reached told him that government forces had raided the house where they were all staying and took them outside and shot them. While Damascus vowed to hold perpetrators of civilian killings to account, some rights groups accused Syria's interim government of systematic sectarian violence similar to that inflicted on the Alawite religious minority in the coastal province of Latakia in the aftermath of al-Assad's fall, as the new government tried to quell a counterinsurgency there. Footage widely circulated on social media showed some of the carnage. One video shows a living room with several bodies on the floor and bullet holes in the walls and sofa. In another, there are at least nine bloodied bodies in one room of the home of a family that took in people fleeing the fighting. Portraits of Druze notables are visible, smashed on the floor. Evelyn Azzam, a Druze woman, is searching the Damascus suburb of Jaramana trying to find out what happened to her husband, Robert Kiwan. Last week, the 23-year-old Kiwan left home in Jaramana early, as he does every day, to commute to his job in Sweida. He got caught up in the chaos when the clashes erupted. Azzam was on the phone with him as government forces questioned him and his coworkers. She heard a gunshot when one of the coworkers raised his voice. She heard her husband trying to appeal to the soldiers. 'He was telling them that they are from the Druze of Sweida but have nothing to do with the armed groups,' the 20-year-old Azzam said. Then she heard another gunshot; her husband was shot in the hip. An ambulance took him to a hospital, where she later learned he underwent an operation. But she hasn't heard anything since and doesn't know if he survived. Back in the US, the Syrian-American said he was relieved that his family is safe, but the video of his friend's family being gunned down in the street filled him with disbelief, betrayal, rage. He said his family and friends protested against al-Assad, celebrated his downfall, and wanted to give al-Sharaa's rule a chance. He said he hadn't wanted to believe that the new Syrian army – which emerged from al-Sharaa's insurgent forces – was made up of extremist militants. But after the violence in Latakia and now in Sweida, he sees the new army as 'a bunch of militias … with a huge majority being radicals. I can't imagine a world where I would be able to go back and integrate with these monsters,' he said.
South China Morning Post
18-07-2025
- Politics
- South China Morning Post
Syria's Sweida: a city of corpses and ruin as Druze reel from bloodshed
One elderly man had been shot in the head in his living room. Another in his bedroom. The body of a woman lay in the street. After days of bloodshed in Syria's Druze city of Sweida, survivors emerged on Thursday to collect and bury the scores of dead found across the city. A ceasefire overnight brought an end to ferocious fighting between Druze militia and government forces sent to the city to quell clashes between Druze and Bedouin fighters. The violence worsened sharply after the arrival of government forces, according to accounts to Reuters by a dozen residents of Sweida, two reporters on the ground and a monitoring group. Residents described friends and neighbours being shot at close range in their homes or in the streets. They said the killings were carried out by Syrian troops, identified by their fatigues and the insignia on them. A health worker fills out a list of victims of the recent clashes. Photo: AFP Reuters was able to verify the time and location of some videos showing dead bodies, but could not independently verify who conducted the killings or when they occurred. In a video statement early on Thursday, Syrian leader Ahmed al-Sharaa said that protecting the rights of Druze was among his priorities and blamed 'outlaw groups' seeking to inflame tensions for any crimes against civilians.
Reuters
17-07-2025
- Politics
- Reuters
Bodies and looted homes: Syria's Druze reeling after Sweida bloodshed
BEIRUT, July 17 (Reuters) - One elderly man had been shot in the head in his living room. Another in his bedroom. The body of a woman lay in the street. After days of bloodshed in Syria's Druze city of Sweida, survivors emerged on Thursday to collect and bury the scores of dead found across the city. A ceasefire overnight brought an end to ferocious fighting between Druze militia and government forces sent to the city to quell clashes between Druze and Bedouin fighters. The violence worsened sharply after the arrival of government forces, according to accounts to Reuters by a dozen residents of Sweida, two reporters on the ground and a monitoring group. Residents described friends and neighbours being shot at close range in their homes or in the streets. They said the killings were carried out by Syrian troops, identified by their fatigues and the insignia on them. Reuters was able to verify the time and location of some videos showing dead bodies, but could not independently verify who conducted the killings or when they occurred. In a video statement early on Thursday, Syrian leader Ahmed al-Sharaa said that protecting the rights of Druze was among his priorities and blamed "outlaw groups" seeking to inflame tensions for any crimes against civilians. He vowed to hold accountable those responsible for violations against the Druze, but did not say whether government forces were responsible. The government's earlier statement on a ceasefire for the region said a fact-finding mission would investigate the "crimes, violations and breaches that happened, determine who was responsible and compensate those affected... as quickly as possible". The residents of Sweida who Reuters spoke to said the bloodshed had deepened their distrust of the Islamist-led government in Damascus and their worries about how Sharaa would ensure that Syria's minority groups were protected. In sectarian violence in Syria's coastal region in March hundreds of people from the Alawite minority were killed by forces aligned to Sharaa. "I can't keep up with the calls coming in now about the dead," said Kenan Azzam, a dentist who lives on the eastern outskirts of Sweida and spoke to Reuters by phone. He said he had just learned of the killing of a friend, agricultural engineer Anis Nasser, who he said had been taken from his home by government forces this week. "Today, they found his dead body in a pile of bodies in Sweida city," Azzam said. Another Sweida resident, who asked to be identified only as Amer out of fear of reprisals, shared a video that he said depicted his slain neighbours in their home. The video, which Reuters was not able to independently verify, showed the body of one man in a chair. On the floor were an elderly man with a gunshot wound to his right temple and a younger man, face down, in a pool of blood. Like the other cases of descriptions of killings in the city, Reuters could not verify who was responsible. Spokespeople for the interior and defence ministries did not immediately respond to questions from Reuters on whether government forces were responsible for the killings in the homes and streets. The Syrian Network for Human Rights, a rights monitor that documented violations throughout the civil war and has continued its work, said it had verified 254 people killed in Sweida, including medical personnel, women and children. Its head, Fadel Abdulghany, said the figure included field executions by both sides, Syrians killed by Israeli strikes and others killed in clashes, but that it would take time to break down figures for each category. Abdulghany said the Network had also documented cases of extrajudicial killings by Druze militias of government forces. The government did not give a death toll for its troops or for civilians killed in Sweida. The health ministry said dozens of dead government forces and civilians were found in the city's main hospital, but did not give further details. Syria's Druze follow a religion derived from Islam and is part of a minority that also has members in Lebanon, Israel, and the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights. Ultra-conservative Sunni groups including Islamic State consider the Druze as heretics and attacked them throughout Syria's conflict, which erupted in 2011. Druze militias fought back, and Sweida was largely spared the violence that engulfed Syria. The 14-year war ended with the ousting of President Bashar al-Assad last December. When Sharaa's forces began fighting their way from northwest Syria to Damascus last year, many minorities feared the rebels and were heartened when fighters passed their towns and went straight to the capital. A reporter in Sweida who asked not to be identified said he witnessed government forces shoot four people at close range, including a woman and teenage boys. He said bodies littered the streets. One of them, a woman, lay face up on the pavement with an apparent stab wound to the stomach, he said. One resident, who asked to remain anonymous, showed the reporter the body of his slain brother in a bedroom of their home on Tuesday. He had been shot in the head. A video verified by Reuters showed two bodies on a commercial street in central Sweida. Another showed bodies, several with gunshot wounds to the chest, in the Al-Radwan guest house in Sweida. Ryan Maarouf of local media outlet Suwayda24 told Reuters on Thursday he had found a family of 12 killed in one house, including naked women, an elderly man and two young girls. It was not possible to verify who killed the people in these cases. The reporter said he heard government forces yell "pigs" and "infidels" at Druze residents. The reporter said troops looted refrigerators and solar panels from homes and also burned homes and alcohol shops, including after the ceasefire was announced on Wednesday. Some of the residents interviewed by Reuters said government forces used razors, scissors and electric shavers to shave off the moustaches of Druze men - a humiliating act. Spokespeople for the interior and defence ministries did not immediately respond to questions on troops looting, burning homes, or using sectarian language and shaving moustaches. As the violence unfolded, Israel's military began strikes on government convoys in Sweida and the defence ministry and near the presidential palace in Damascus. U.S. intervention helped end the fighting. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said "historic longtime rivalries" between Druze and Bedouin communities had "led to an unfortunate situation and a misunderstanding, it looks like, between the Israeli side and the Syrian side."
CNA
17-07-2025
- Politics
- CNA
Middle East tensions: Ceasefire appears to be holding following days of conflict in Syria's south
A ceasefire appears to be holding in Syria's south, with government troops moving out of the city of Sweida overnight. The US had intervened to end days of fighting between government forces and fighters from the Druze minority group. Blake Sifton reports from Tel Aviv.
