Latest news with #SyrianGovernment
Al Arabiya
11 hours ago
- Politics
- Al Arabiya
Syria forms committee to investigate violence in Sweida province
Syria's justice ministry announced on Thursday the formation of a committee to investigate deadly violence in the southern Druze-majority province of Sweida. The week-long clashes which began on July 13 killed scores of people. In a decree issued Thursday, the justice ministry said it sought to shed light on 'the circumstances and conditions that led to the events,' investigate 'attacks and violations against citizens' and refer any culprits to the judiciary. A seven-member committee, including four judges, two lawyers and a brigadier general, would present its findings within three months, the decree said. Justice Minister Mazhar al-Wais said the committee was formed to 'bring those involved to justice.' Al-Wais expressed his hope that the investigation 'will lead to the preservation of the rights of all citizens ... and the protection of national unity and civil peace.' The violence in Sweida had initially pitted local Druze fighters against Bedouin tribes, but rapidly escalated and saw the involvement of Syrian government forces as well as Israel, which has claimed it was acting to protect the Druze minority.
LBCI
2 days ago
- Politics
- LBCI
Syrian FM heads to Russia on Thursday
A source said Syrian Foreign Minister Asaad al-Shaibani will travel to Russia on Thursday. Al-Shaibani will be the highest-ranking Syrian official to visit Moscow since the ouster of Moscow's ally Bashar al-Assad in December and the appointment of a new government in Damascus. Russia and the new Syrian government are holding talks over Moscow's hopes to continue operating its naval and air bases in northwestern Syria. Reuters
Times
5 days ago
- Politics
- Times
Syria returns to bloodshed: ‘I'm a mother who saw her sons killed'
For two long minutes, the gunmen emptied their Kalashnikovs into the car. Inside were six people — five students in their twenties and a schoolboy of 15. For two long minutes, Ghassan Kordab, 59, and his wife, Raja, 55, sat in the vehicle in front, unable to do anything but watch as their three sons and three nephews were massacred. 'I watched as they shot my sons,' said Kordab. 'They shouted, 'You Druze are pigs!' then opened fire. They kept shooting for two minutes. I saw flesh flying in the air. 'My wife was screaming, 'My children! I want my children!' I didn't know what to do.' The gunmen, who the couple insist belonged to Syrian government forces, then dragged the bodies out, stripping them of their rings and mobile phones, even their student backpacks. The horrific story is one of hundreds in Syria's southern province of Sweida, home to the country's Druze minority, which for two weeks has been engulfed in some of the deadliest violence since the Syrian civil war began in 2011. Clashes between Druze and Bedouin tribesmen, which started with the abduction of a local vegetable seller, spiralled so far out of control that tanks were sent in and Israel launched airstrikes on central Damascus. More than 1,400 died, scores of them in summary executions, and 176,000 people were displaced, according to the United Nations office for humanitarian affairs, UNOCHA. It has also left serious questions about the new administration of President al-Sharaa. He came in amid euphoric scenes in December after the forces he led toppled the long-time dictator Bashar al-Assad, but many fear that he and his followers have not shaken off their jihadist past. The Kordabs, who live in the main town of Sweida, had been trying to take the boys to safety in a mountain village on Tuesday, July 15, two days after the conflict erupted, and the day government forces had arrived, supposedly to quell the violence. 'We heard they were killing young men,' said Kordab. His wife insisted on coming, thinking that with a woman present, the militias would not target them. The couple were in one car and the boys in the car behind, driven by Fajir, 21, who was studying human resources. Having avoided one checkpoint which they said had bodies all around, they took another road — only to be stopped by two men with Kalashnikovs who they say were in military fatigues. 'My son greeted them with 'Salam alaikum' [peace be with you] then they shouted 'You Druze are pigs!' and began firing.' Kordab managed to accelerate round the corner and ran to neighbouring houses, begging for a weapon, but no one replied. Distraught, the couple returned to their ground floor apartment where they were soon under siege from militias shouting: 'We are coming for you Druze pigs.' Outside the apartment are several shot-up cars. Sitting inside with his grieving brothers and sisters-in-law and their daughters, all pale-faced and black-clad, Kordab shows his mobile with smiling photos of the boys — Hisham, the eldest, taking a master's in administration; Laith, 23, a postgraduate in engineering and Fajir. There were also pictures of his nephews Zeid, 20, studying IT; Omran, 24, also studying human resources, and Rebal, 15, who was still at school. 'They were all bright young men studying to help rebuild our country,' he said. 'All the males of our family have been killed.' Then Kordab shows photographs of the car, peppered with bullet holes, the interior stained with blood and what he says are the blown-out brains of two of his sons. 'I have no words,' sobbed his wife Raja. 'I am a mother who watched all her sons killed. There can be no worse fate.' It was three days before they could get out and retrieve their bodies for burial. At the funeral Kordab's father told them his house had been raided six times by thieving gangs. The following day Kordab got a call to say his father, 86, had been killed. He shows a photo of the old man lying in a pool of blood, his left foot chopped off. 'They not only killed him but tortured him,' he said. There is a long history of tensions between local Sunni Bedouin and Druze — part of an esoteric Shia sect spread over Syria, Lebanon and Israel. This latest violence started after the kidnapping on July 11 of a Druze vegetable truck driver on the highway to Damascus. Druze militias retaliated by abducting Bedouin tribesmen and a tit-for-tat campaign began which within two days became open warfare with militias on both sides killing and abducting people and burning houses. Amid this chaos, the interim Syrian government deployed troops, supposedly to restore calm but in fact escalating the tensions: some of these forces included militants who have since been accused of carrying out summary executions. This infuriated Israel, which has its own Druze population, many of which fight on the front lines in Gaza. Israel has occupied wide swathes of border areas since Assad's demise and demanded that southern Syria be a demilitarised zone. Apparently to protect them, Binyamin Netanyahu unexpectedly launched airstrikes, not only in Sweida but on the defence ministry in the centre of Damascus and the presidential palace, forcing Syrian forces to withdraw and prompting President Trump's officials to apparently exclaim: 'Bibi is crazy, he bombs everything all the time.' Armed Sunni tribesmen from across Syria — many of them extremists who regard the Druze as heretical — then headed south to fill the void left by retreating government troops. Not only did they carry Kalashnikovs but also moustache clippers to humiliate Druze men by cutting off their trademark facial hair. Fear hangs over Sweida, a town that is now under siege. You reach it through a series of government checkpoints then two kilometres of rocky no man's land before a checkpoint manned by local militias bearing the colourfully striped Druze flag. While much of Syria was flattened by 14 years of war — with rebuilding costs estimated at $400 billion, according to the Carnegie Endowment for Peace — Sweida was left relatively untouched. Three-storey mansions with solar panels and topiary hedges testify to the distance that the Druze kept from both Assad and the opposition, retaining a measure of autonomy which some of them used to carry out lucrative smuggling operations. Now, as you enter Sweida you see a burnt-out tank, a house destroyed by an airstrike, dozens of cars incinerated or shot, and charred shops and houses. Few people are leaving their homes and the men all have weapons. One was wearing a T-shirt printed with the word 'Peace', while pick-ups drove around mounted with anti-aircraft guns. A putrefying stench of death hangs over the national hospital where Akbal Sharaf, a radiology nurse, shows me round rooms spattered with bullet holes and a hall where she and the entire medical team were forced to kneel by militants who stormed the building, shooting the head of security. More than 100 body bags of unidentified corpses were left in the sun because the morgue was overflowing. They have now been buried in a mass grave. In an office a coroner shows photographs of the dead —some of the 509 bodies brought to the hospital, including a three-month-old girl. Stories of slaughter are round every corner. In the historic wood-ceilinged hall where elders gather, Hatim Radwan, 70, shows the bullet holes in the photographs of Druze ancestors and bloodstains on the floor. He described the moment when four gunmen came, smashed the glass table with their Kalashnikov then shot at him and 17 other men sheltering there, shouting, 'Kill them all! We don't want them identifying us.' A bullet only grazed Radwan's calf but 13 men were slain. 'I expected to die,' he said. 'I don't know how I survived.' No one knows how many people have been killed. Many bodies still lie in abandoned houses but the hospitals have run out of body bags for them. Although a ceasefire is in place, sporadic clashes are still continuing in the countryside and few believe this conflict is over. On Thursday afternoon the tribes were told by the government to pull out but many remain. That means the Druze inside Sweida town cannot leave. At a checkpoint near Bosra al Sham a group of tribesmen sat on the grass sharing a dinner given to them by government forces. Dressed exactly like jihadis, with black-and-white Shahada patches declaring 'There is one God but Allah', usually worn by members of Isis, they say they had come from Raqqa, Tartus and Doula, and had all been fighting since 2011. Initially reluctant to talk to someone from the western media, they eventually agreed. 'We are individuals from different places,' said Abdul Mohsin, 35, from Raqqa. 'What brings us together is Islam and blood, we came to protect our land and women.' 'It began with the Hijri gangs,' he says, referring to the followers of Sheikh Hijri, the most radical of the Druze leaders, 'with the external support of those who want to kill Sunni people and do in Syria what they did in Gaza.' 'They killed babies and foetuses and raped our women but international press do not report this,' he continued. 'Every action has a reaction so killing equals killing. Defending ourselves is our right.' The men were pulling back from Sweida but, he insisted, 'it's not finished. We're still in the area and fully ready. They still have our people in Sweida they took as human shields as well as our dead who they buried in a mass grave and won't let us bring out.' Asked about the Druze, he said: 'We don't know Druze — we only know brutal people. They don't have any place in my heart or the Arab world and should go to hell or to Israel.' 'Why should I accept to live with someone who cuts off a baby's head?' agreed his friend, Abdul Khadir, from Tartus. As the conflict continues, Stephan Sakalian, Syria director of the International Committee of the Red Cross, warned of humanitarian crises both in Sweida — where there are shortages of food, water and fuel for generators in 40-degree heat — but also among the displaced in camps in Daraa and Damascus. The government is refusing access to Sweida for all international organisations and only two aid convoys have been allowed, both from the Syrian Red Crescent. Among the vital supplies they took in were 950 body bags. No one knows how this will end. Not only is there no trust between the Bedouins and the Druze, but other minorities are fearful. The slaughter in Sweida has followed a killing spree in Latakia on the Syrian coast in March which left about 1,600 dead, mainly from the Alawite minority (which the Assads were from), and a bombing of a church in Damascus. Some minorities, such as the Kurds, are far more powerful, with their own army, the SDF. Many fear the country may descend into sectarian conflict as the country's new rulers struggle to assert their authority over a nation fractured by years of civil war and 50 years of dictatorship. 'This is the question all Syrians are asking inside and out,' says Rime Allaf, a Syrian analyst and author of the forthcoming It Started in Damascus, a chronicle of Syria and the revolution. She is hopeful that Al-Sharaa will be pushed to agree to training for the police and army, as the international and regional community, including Saudi Arabia, are determined for the new administration to succeed. On Thursday, as clashes continued in the south, officials from Saudi Arabia and other Gulf countries were at the Four Seasons hotel in Damascus signing off on a $6.4 billion investment package. Many are less sanguine. 'It's utterly scary to see this dangerous rise of sectarian incitement, online and offline, that is driving our country into a civil war,' said Razan Rashidi, executive director of the Syria Campaign, a human rights group that for years documented abuses of the Assad regime. It's a fear that can be seen in the disfigured face of an eight-year-old called Hala. She was shot in the face and right wrist and left for dead by gunmen who entered her house in Sweida, slaughtering her two sisters, Marianna, 13, and Nada, 17, along with their parents. Now she sits terrified, her once pretty face disfigured by a bullet which shattered her nose and her left eye socket, and tore open her cheek. A neighbour, Hashim, shows a gruesome video on his phone of soldiers entering their house and finding the bodies of her parents and sisters covered in blood. Hala is being looked after by her aunt, Ferial al-Khatab, who phoned her mother to see if she was OK. Instead it was answered by Hala, who said: 'Auntie, we have been shot and I am alone. Please come and get me.' Khatab said there was 'so much shooting and bombing going on I couldn't get to her'. Two days later, she found Hala in hospital. No one knows how she was taken there. On Saturday afternoon, Hala was being ferried to Israel, where surgeons hope to reconstruct her face. But the horrors of that day will be impossible to remove. 'They turned our kitchen from orange to red,' Hala said.
The Independent
6 days ago
- The Independent
In Syria's Sweida, the stench of death still lingers days after sectarian bloodshed
The stench of decaying bodies hangs heavy in the streets of the provincial capital in Syria's southern province of Sweida, where fighting recently erupted. Once bustling roads now lie eerily silent, with only a few people passing by. In some areas, the destruction is overwhelming, with buildings and cars charred black. At a bank branch, shattered glass covered the floor as an alarm blared nonstop. Walls are emblazoned with slogans graffitied by both sides in the recent conflict. The devastation came after violent clashes broke out two weeks ago, sparked by tit-for-tat kidnappings between armed Bedouin clans and fighters from the Druze religious minority. The fighting killed hundreds of people and threatened to unravel Syria's fragile postwar transition. Syrian government forces intervened, ostensibly to end the fighting, but effectively sided with the clans. Some government fighters reportedly robbed and executed Druze civilians. Associated Press journalists from outside the city were able to enter Sweida on Friday for the first time since the violence started on July 13. With a ceasefire largely holding, residents of Sweida are trying to pick up the pieces of their lives. 'Snipers hit him' At the main hospital, where bodies of those killed in the fighting were piled up for days, workers were scrubbing the floor, but the smell lingered. Manal Harb was there with her wounded 19-year-old son, Safi Dargham, a first-year engineering student, who was shot while volunteering at the overwhelmed hospital. 'Snipers hit him in front of the hospital,' she said. 'We are civilians and have no weapons.' Safi sustained injuries to his elbow, behind his ear, and his leg. Harb says he may lose his arm if he doesn't receive urgent treatment. Harb's husband, Khaled Dargham, was killed when armed men stormed their home, shot him, and set the house on fire. She said the armed men also stole their phones and other belongings. An emergency room nurse who gave only her nickname, Em Hassib ("mother of Hassib"), said she had remained in the hospital with her children throughout the conflict. She alleged that at one point, government fighters who were brought to the hospital for treatment opened fire, killing a police officer guarding the hospital and wounding another. The AP could not independently verify her claim. She said the bodies had piled up for days with no one to remove them, becoming a medical hazard. Sectarian tensions simmer as Druze resist disarmament Disturbing videos and reports from Sweida surfaced showing Druze civilians being humiliated and executed during the conflict, sometimes accompanied by sectarian slurs. After a ceasefire took hold, some Druze groups launched revenge attacks on Bedouin communities. The U.N. has said more than 130,000 people were displaced by the violence. Government officials, including interim President Ahmad al-Sharaa, have promised to hold accountable those who targeted civilians, but many residents of Sweida remain angry and suspicious. The Druze religious sect is an offshoot of Ismailism, a branch of Shiite Islam. There are roughly a million Druze worldwide and more than half of them live in Syria. The others live in Lebanon and Israel, including in the Golan Heights — which Israel captured from Syria during the 1967 Mideast War and annexed in 1981. The Druze largely welcomed the fall of former President Bashar Assad in December in a rebel offensive that ended decades of autocratic rule by the Assad dynasty. However, the new government under al-Sharaa, a former Islamist commander who once had al-Qaida ties, drew mixed reactions from Druze leaders. Some clerics supported engaging with the new leadership, while others, including spiritual leader Sheikh Hikmat al-Hijri and his Sweida Military Council, opposed him. Al-Sharaa has denied targeting the Druze and blamed the unrest on armed groups defying state authority, particularly those loyal to al-Hijri. He also accused Israel of deepening divisions by striking Syrian forces in Sweida, attacks that were carried out under the pretext of defending the Druze. Talal Jaramany, a 30-year-old Druze resort owner, took up arms during the fighting. 'What pushed me to put on a military uniform and go to the front lines is that what happened was lawless,' he told The Associated Press. Jaramany insisted there was little distinction between the Bedouin clans and the government's General Security forces. 'They used weapons, not dialogue,' he said. He rejects calls for disarmament, saying the Druze need their weapons for self-defense. 'We won't hand over our arms. Our weapon is sacred," he said. "It's not for attacking. We've never been supporters of war. We'll only give it up when the state provides real security that protects human rights." Sweida's Christians also recount near-death escapes Members of Sweida's Christian minority were also caught up in the violence. At a church where a number of Christian families were sheltering, 36-year-old Walaa al-Shammas, a housewife with two children, said a rocket struck her home on July 16. 'Had we not been sheltering in the hallway, we would've been gone," she said. "My house lies in destruction and our cars are gone.' Gunmen came to the damaged house later, but moved on, apparently thinking it was empty as the family hid in the hallway, she said. In recent days, hundreds of people — Bedouins as well as Druze and Christians — have evacuated Sweida in convoys of buses carrying them to other areas, organized by the Syrian Red Crescent. Others have found their own way out. Micheline Jaber, a public employee in the provincial government in Sweida, was trying to flee the clashes last week with her husband, in-laws and extended family members when the two cars they were driving in came under shelling. She was wounded but survived, along with her mother-in-law and the young son of one of her husband's siblings. Her husband and the rest of the family members who were fleeing with them were killed. Someone, Jaber doesn't know who, loaded her and the other two survivors in a car and drove them to an ambulance crew, which evacuated them to a hospital outside of the city. She was then taken to another hospital in the southwestern city of Daraa, and finally transported to Damascus. She's now staying with friends in the Damascus suburb of Jaramana, her arms encased in bandages. 'When the shell hit the car, I came out alive — I was able to get out of the car and walk normally,' Jaber said. 'When you see all the people who died and I'm still here, I don't understand it. God has His reasons.' The one thing that comforts her is that her 15-year-old daughter was with her parents elsewhere at the time and was not harmed. 'My daughter is the most important thing and she is what gives me strength,' Jaber said. ___
Associated Press
6 days ago
- Associated Press
In Syria's Sweida, the stench of death still lingers days after sectarian bloodshed
SWEIDA, Syria (AP) — The stench of decaying bodies hangs heavy in the streets of the provincial capital in Syria's southern province of Sweida, where fighting recently erupted. Once bustling roads now lie eerily silent, with only a few people passing by. In some areas, the destruction is overwhelming, with buildings and cars charred black. At a bank branch, shattered glass covered the floor as an alarm blared nonstop. Walls are emblazoned with slogans graffitied by both sides in the recent conflict. The devastation came after violent clashes broke out two weeks ago, sparked by tit-for-tat kidnappings between armed Bedouin clans and fighters from the Druze religious minority. The fighting killed hundreds of people and threatened to unravel Syria's fragile postwar transition. Syrian government forces intervened, ostensibly to end the fighting, but effectively sided with the clans. Some government fighters reportedly robbed and executed Druze civilians. Associated Press journalists from outside the city were able to enter Sweida on Friday for the first time since the violence started on July 13. With a ceasefire largely holding, residents of Sweida are trying to pick up the pieces of their lives. 'Snipers hit him' At the main hospital, where bodies of those killed in the fighting were piled up for days, workers were scrubbing the floor, but the smell lingered. Manal Harb was there with her wounded 19-year-old son, Safi Dargham, a first-year engineering student, who was shot while volunteering at the overwhelmed hospital. 'Snipers hit him in front of the hospital,' she said. 'We are civilians and have no weapons.' Safi sustained injuries to his elbow, behind his ear, and his leg. Harb says he may lose his arm if he doesn't receive urgent treatment. Harb's husband, Khaled Dargham, was killed when armed men stormed their home, shot him, and set the house on fire. She said the armed men also stole their phones and other belongings. An emergency room nurse who gave only her nickname, Em Hassib ('mother of Hassib'), said she had remained in the hospital with her children throughout the conflict. She alleged that at one point, government fighters who were brought to the hospital for treatment opened fire, killing a police officer guarding the hospital and wounding another. The AP could not independently verify her claim. She said the bodies had piled up for days with no one to remove them, becoming a medical hazard. Sectarian tensions simmer as Druze resist disarmament Disturbing videos and reports from Sweida surfaced showing Druze civilians being humiliated and executed during the conflict, sometimes accompanied by sectarian slurs. After a ceasefire took hold, some Druze groups launched revenge attacks on Bedouin communities. The U.N. has said more than 130,000 people were displaced by the violence. Government officials, including interim President Ahmad al-Sharaa, have promised to hold accountable those who targeted civilians, but many residents of Sweida remain angry and suspicious. The Druze religious sect is an offshoot of Ismailism, a branch of Shiite Islam. There are roughly a million Druze worldwide and more than half of them live in Syria. The others live in Lebanon and Israel, including in the Golan Heights — which Israel captured from Syria during the 1967 Mideast War and annexed in 1981. The Druze largely welcomed the fall of former President Bashar Assad in December in a rebel offensive that ended decades of autocratic rule by the Assad dynasty. However, the new government under al-Sharaa, a former Islamist commander who once had al-Qaida ties, drew mixed reactions from Druze leaders. Some clerics supported engaging with the new leadership, while others, including spiritual leader Sheikh Hikmat al-Hijri and his Sweida Military Council, opposed him. Al-Sharaa has denied targeting the Druze and blamed the unrest on armed groups defying state authority, particularly those loyal to al-Hijri. He also accused Israel of deepening divisions by striking Syrian forces in Sweida, attacks that were carried out under the pretext of defending the Druze. Talal Jaramany, a 30-year-old Druze resort owner, took up arms during the fighting. 'What pushed me to put on a military uniform and go to the front lines is that what happened was lawless,' he told The Associated Press. Jaramany insisted there was little distinction between the Bedouin clans and the government's General Security forces. 'They used weapons, not dialogue,' he said. He rejects calls for disarmament, saying the Druze need their weapons for self-defense. 'We won't hand over our arms. Our weapon is sacred,' he said. 'It's not for attacking. We've never been supporters of war. We'll only give it up when the state provides real security that protects human rights.' Sweida's Christians also recount near-death escapes Members of Sweida's Christian minority were also caught up in the violence. At a church where a number of Christian families were sheltering, 36-year-old Walaa al-Shammas, a housewife with two children, said a rocket struck her home on July 16. 'Had we not been sheltering in the hallway, we would've been gone,' she said. 'My house lies in destruction and our cars are gone.' Gunmen came to the damaged house later, but moved on, apparently thinking it was empty as the family hid in the hallway, she said. In recent days, hundreds of people — Bedouins as well as Druze and Christians — have evacuated Sweida in convoys of buses carrying them to other areas, organized by the Syrian Red Crescent. Others have found their own way out. Micheline Jaber, a public employee in the provincial government in Sweida, was trying to flee the clashes last week with her husband, in-laws and extended family members when the two cars they were driving in came under shelling. She was wounded but survived, along with her mother-in-law and the young son of one of her husband's siblings. Her husband and the rest of the family members who were fleeing with them were killed. Someone, Jaber doesn't know who, loaded her and the other two survivors in a car and drove them to an ambulance crew, which evacuated them to a hospital outside of the city. She was then taken to another hospital in the southwestern city of Daraa, and finally transported to Damascus. She's now staying with friends in the Damascus suburb of Jaramana, her arms encased in bandages. 'When the shell hit the car, I came out alive — I was able to get out of the car and walk normally,' Jaber said. 'When you see all the people who died and I'm still here, I don't understand it. God has His reasons.' The one thing that comforts her is that her 15-year-old daughter was with her parents elsewhere at the time and was not harmed. 'My daughter is the most important thing and she is what gives me strength,' Jaber said. ___ Abou AlJoud reported from Beirut.
