In Syria's Sweida, the stench of death still lingers days after sectarian bloodshed

San Francisco Chronicle​

12 hours ago

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.
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Abou AlJoud reported from Beirut.