Calm returns to south Syria after violence that killed over 1,100: Monitor - Region

Al-Ahram Weekly

3 days ago

Calm returned to southern Syria's Sweida province on Sunday, a monitor and AFP correspondents reported, after a week of sectarian violence between Druze fighters and rival groups that killed more than 1,100 people.
A ceasefire announced on Saturday appeared to be holding after earlier agreements failed to end fighting between longtime rivals the Druze and the Bedouin that spiralled to draw in the Islamist-led government, the Israeli military and armed tribes from other parts of Syria.
AFP correspondents on the outskirts of Sweida city reported hearing no clashes on Sunday morning, with government forces deployed in some locations in the province to enforce the truce.
The first humanitarian aid convoy entered the city on Sunday, Red Crescent official Omar al-Malki said, adding that it would be followed by others.
He said the convoy came "in coordination with the government bodies and the local authorities in Sweida", which are controlled by the Druze.
The Syrian government meanwhile said a Druze group blocked its own convoy from entering the city.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said that since around midnight (2100 GMT Saturday), "Sweida has been experiencing a cautious calm", adding government security forces had blocked roads leading to the province in order to prevent tribal fighters from going there.
The Britain-based Observatory gave an updated toll late Sunday of 1,120 killed since the violence erupted a week ago, including 427 Druze fighters and 298 civilians from the minority group, as well as 354 government security personnel and 21 Sunni Bedouin.
Witnesses, Druze factions and the Observatory have accused government forces of siding with the Bedouin and committing abuses including summary executions when they entered Sweida days ago.
'Totally calm'
Hanadi Obeid, a 39-year-old doctor, told AFP that "the city hasn't seen calm like this in a week".
The interior ministry said overnight that Sweida city was "evacuated of all tribal fighters, and clashes within the city's neighbourhoods were halted".
The Observatory had said Druze fighters retook control of the city on Saturday evening.
Interim President Ahmed al-Sharaa had on Saturday announced a ceasefire in Sweida and renewed a pledge to protect Syria's ethnic and religious minorities in the face of the latest sectarian violence since Islamists overthrew longtime ruler Bashar al-Assad in December.
A spokesman for Syria's tribal and clan council told Al Jazeera late Saturday that fighters had left the city "in response to the call of the presidency and the terms of the agreement".
A medic inside Sweida told AFP by telephone on Sunday that "the situation is totally calm... We aren't hearing clashes."
Residents of Sweida city, who number at about 150,000, have been holed up in their homes without electricity and water, and food supplies have also been scarce.
An AFP photographer said the morgue at Sweida's main hospital was full and bodies were lying on the ground outside the building.
The United Nations migration agency said more than 128,000 people in Sweida province have been displaced by the violence.
'Brutal acts'
US special envoy to Syria Tom Barrack said Sunday that the country stood at a "critical juncture", adding that "peace and dialogue must prevail -- and prevail now".
"All factions must immediately lay down their arms, cease hostilities, and abandon cycles of tribal vengeance," he wrote on X, saying "brutal acts by warring factions on the ground undermine the government's authority and disrupt any semblance of order".
Sharaa's announcement on Saturday came hours after the United States said it had negotiated a ceasefire between Syria's government and Israel, which had bombed government forces in both Sweida and Damascus earlier in the week.
Following the strikes, the Syrian president hit out at Israel's military intervention, saying it "resorted to a wide-scale targeting of civilian and government facilities," which would have pushed "matters to a large-scale escalation, except for the effective intervention of American, Arab, and Turkish mediation, which saved the region from an unknown fate."
Israel, which has its own Druze community, has presented itself as a defender of the minority group. However, some analysts say this could be a pretext for pursuing its own military goal of keeping Syrian government forces as far away as possible from the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights.
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Saturday urged the Syrian government's security forces to prevent jihadists from entering and "carrying out massacres" in the south, and called on Damascus to "bring to justice anyone guilty of atrocities, including those in their own ranks."
*This story was edited by Ahram Online.
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