
Syria withdraws army from Sweida after Israel bombs Damascus
. The Syrian government forces have been targeting the minorities, including the Aalwites , the Christians and the Druze
Syria's army began withdrawing from violence-hit Sweida on Wednesday after Israeli strikes on Damascus and US calls for a pullback from the Druze-majority city, state media said. Washington, which seeks to mend ties with Syria, said a deal was reached to restore calm and urged all sides to uphold commitments.
Syria
announced that its army had begun to withdraw from violence-hit Sweida on Wednesday, following a
wave of Israeli strikes
on the capital and a US call for government forces to leave the majority-Druze southern city.
The United States, which is close allies with Israel and has been trying to reboot its relationship with Syria, said an agreement had been reached to restore calm in the area, and urged 'all parties to deliver on the commitments they have made'.
The Syrian government earlier announced a new ceasefire in Sweida that would bring a halt to military operations there, after clashes that a war monitor said had left more than 300 people dead since Sunday.
The Syrian army 'has begun withdrawing from the city of Sweida in implementation of the terms of the adopted agreement, after the end of the sweep of the city for outlaw groups', a defence ministry statement said.
The statement did not mention any withdrawal of other government security forces, which had deployed to the city on Tuesday with the stated aim of overseeing a previous truce agreed with Druze community leaders following days of deadly fighting with local Bedouin tribes.
That ceasefire appeared to have little effect, however, with witnesses reporting that the government forces joined with the Bedouin in attacking Druze fighters and civilians in a bloody rampage through the city.
The Syrian Observatory for
Human Rights
war monitor said that the violence in Sweida province had left more than 300 people dead, including government forces, local fighters and 27 Druze civilians killed in 'summary executions'.
The Syrian presidency vowed to investigate the 'heinous acts' in Sweida and to punish 'all those proven to be involved'.
Israel, which has its
own Druze community
, has presented itself as a defender of the group, although some analysts say that is a pretext for pursuing its own military goal of keeping Syrian government forces as far from their shared frontier as possible.
Following the fall of Syria's longtime ruler Bashar al-Assad in December, the Israeli military took control of the UN-monitored demilitarised zone in the Golan Heights and conducted hundreds of strikes on military targets in Syria.
After carrying out air strikes in Sweida province earlier this week in what it said was defence of the Druze, Israel launched a series of attacks on the capital Damascus on Wednesday.
AFP images showed the side of a building in the defence ministry complex in ruins after one strike, as smoke billowed over the area.
Israel said it had also struck a 'military target' in the area of the presidential palace, while a Syrian interior ministry source reported strikes outside the capital in 'the vicinity of the Mazzeh (military) airport'.
Israeli Defence Minister Israel Katz called on Damascus to 'leave the Druze in Sweida alone', and threatened to unleash 'painful blows' until government forces pulled back.
Syria's foreign ministry slammed the attacks as a 'dangerous escalation', while Israel's military chief insisted his forces were 'acting with responsibility, restraint and sound judgment'.
The Syrian health ministry said that at least three people were killed and 34 wounded in the strikes on Damascus.
Announcing the new ceasefire on Wednesday, Syria's interior ministry said there would be a 'total and immediate halt to all military operations', as well as the formation of a committee comprising government representatives and Druze spiritual leaders to supervise its implementation.
An AFP correspondent in Sweida, however, reported hearing gunfire in the city even after the announcement.
In a video carried by state television, Sheikh Youssef Jarboua, one of Syria's main Druze spiritual leaders, read out the 10 points of the accord, which also includes 'the full integration of the province' of Sweida into the Syrian state.
Until now, Druze areas have been controlled by fighters from the minority community.
The latest fighting was the most serious outbreak of violence in Syria since government forces battled Druze fighters in Sweida province and near
Damascus
in April and May, leaving more than 100 people dead.
The clashes between the Bedouin and the Druze that first prompted the government deployment were triggered by the kidnapping of a Druze vegetable merchant, according to the Observatory. The two groups have been at loggerheads for decades.
The Islamist authorities have had strained relations with Syria's patchwork of religious and ethnic minorities, and have been repeatedly accused of not doing enough to protect them.
US Secretary of State
Marco Rubio
had expressed concern on Wednesday about the Israeli bombings, adding 'we want it to stop'.
A State Department spokesperson said Washington was also asking Syria to 'withdraw their military in order to enable all sides to de-escalate'.
Rubio later announced on X that all sides had 'agreed on specific steps that will bring this troubling and horrifying situation to an end'.
'This will require all parties to deliver on the commitments they have made and this is what we fully expect them to do,' he wrote, without elaborating on the nature of the agreement.
(FRANCE 24 with AFP)
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On the morning of Sunday, July 20, after several sleepless hours — as has been the case for many nights now — I learned of the death of my great-uncle, Hayel Kontar. Hayel was 82 years old. He had spent his life in Sweida, where he worked for the Red Crescent. An educated, cultured man, he was respected by all for his kindness and humanity. He was killed by Islamists of Syria's new regime, solely because he was Druze. I have lost count of the deaths in my family. So far, the toll has already passed 15, and it is still impossible to know the true number of victims of this barbaric invasion launched against the Druze-majority province. Sweida lies in devastation. Every town and village — about 30 — crossed by the army and militias linked to Damascus, has been set on fire. Residents who did not flee were massacred. In my village, Dama, in the Lajah region, homes were looted, then torched one after another. One of the fighters even filmed the scene, posting a video in which he can be heard rejoicing: 'All the Druze houses in Dama are burning.' The death toll remains impossible to determine. There is no water, electricity, fuel or functioning hospital. Sweida's main hospital is out of service. Corpses piled in body bags line the streets. The so-called "valiant" army of Sharaa looted supermarkets before setting them on fire. The city has only a few days' worth of food left. Vehicles that were not stolen have been burned, making any movement nearly impossible. The ravaged towns have been abandoned, cut off from the world. Relief efforts cannot be coordinated. Residents organize however they can, discovering the horror as they gradually regain a foothold in the neighborhoods that had been occupied by government forces. Among the atrocities recorded is the massacre of the family of Khaled Mazhar, head of the Evangelical Church of the Good Shepherd in Sweida. He, his brothers, their children — 20 people in all — were executed in their home. Why this bloodbath? Buoyed by the lifting of sanctions, and by the removal of his name from the U.S. terrorism list, the interim president wanted to assert his authority by brute force in Sweida, as he had in Idlib: by crushing all political and social forces. In talks with Israel for a peace treaty, and with his international legitimacy strengthened, he felt the time was ripe to bring the Druze province under control by force. He exploited the recurrent tensions between Druze and Bedouins — tensions usually settled through mediation by local elders — to send his army on the pretext of intervention. This tragedy reveals above all the mindset animating Syria's new rulers. To the new masters of Damascus and their supporters, who always refer to the Islamic era of the Umayyads, the minority's son, even if national and 'honorable,' is only a dhimmi, who should only speak to thank the wisdom of the regime that allows him to live on his land. But if he demands equal rights, then he becomes a traitor, a foreign agent. This ideology comes through in statements by regime supporters: to them, the nation is synonymous with the Sunni majority. Minorities are merely tolerated, and this tolerance is presented as evidence of openness, even generosity. The current phase of the transitional regime is nothing more than a demand for forced allegiance (al-mubaayaa) to President Sharaa. It is with this sectarian vision of Syria that Sharaa sent in his troops, made up exclusively of former Hay'at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) jihadists and rebel fighters once affiliated with Turkey, to invade Sweida. The bloodbath we're witnessing today was, unfortunately, predictable. And why? To impose his power on a province whose sole wealth is its educated population and its diaspora. Sweida has neither oil nor gas nor vital infrastructure. All government offices are already under the authority of Damascus' ministries. If residents refused the entry of security forces, it was because of the crimes committed on the coast last March against the Alawite minority, and the abuses suffered by the Druze in April and May, following the spread of a fake recording in which a Druze sheikh allegedly insulted the Prophet. It was probably the impunity for these earlier massacres that convinced the interim president that the invasion of Sweida would provoke little reaction. But these events deeply shocked the entire Druze community, who no longer wished to see those with blood on their hands inside their province. Upon arrival, regime troops targeted the men's beards and mustaches — an act of extreme humiliation — before massacring them. The trampling of Sultan Basha al-Atrash's portrait as troops entered Sweida is a powerful symbol. Al-Atrash, a hero of the Syrian revolt against the French mandate, embodies the Druze's belonging to the Syrian nation. By trampling this symbol, the new regime marks a rupture with post-independence Syria. They wish to rebuild a new Syrian identity fashioned after themselves: exclusive, homogeneous and authoritarian. The regime and its supporters are in total denial regarding the massacre that occurred. They shift the blame onto Sheikh al-Hijri and onto abuses committed by certain Druze militias against the region's Bedouins, forgetting that there can be no equivalence between the crimes of militiamen and those, based on religious criteria, perpetrated by a regular army meant to protect all citizens. Al-Hijri, a controversial Druze religious leader for his ties with Israeli Druze, has become the pretext for a widespread hate campaign against an entire community. From the regime's inner circle to influencers on social media, he is labeled a Zionist agent, a claim his accusers say justifies the subsequent massacres. The rupture is now total. How can these wounds heal? The gaping wounds inflicted on Syrian society by this invasion weigh heavily on me. Millions of us placed our hope in this transitional president, in the euphoria that followed Assad's downfall. Hope had swept across all Syrians, and I myself quickly called on the European Parliament to lift economic sanctions against the country. We wanted to open up to this new regime to heal the country's wounds and rebuild what Assad had destroyed. Nearly 14 years of struggle against tyranny led me, like many others, to extend a hand to the transitional president. The conclusion today is grim. The interim president chose to stoke the most primal instincts of society, encouraging a communal war waged by Arab tribes against the Druze. Thursday, July 24, as the province of Sweida continued to agonize, Sharaa inaugurated projects as fanciful as they are unrealistic — like a media city estimated at $1.5 billion and an amusement park at $400 million — with a Saudi delegation, solely to make a starving population believe the future is bright. How can those who experienced Assad's sieges of Homs, Aleppo or Deraa now use the same methods against other Syrians? How could this government possibly heal a country wounded by 14 years of war, which Assad made sectarian, if it adopts these same mechanisms of division and hatred? Between 1,000 and 2,000 Syrians of all faiths have died in recent days. It's a national tragedy, just as the massacres on the coast were in March. Not acting accordingly is to plunge the country into a new cycle of violence. It would take a miracle for hope to be reborn in Syria. 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