DAMASCUS, Syria (AP) — Syrian government forces largely pulled out of the southern province of Sweida on Thursday after days of clashes with militias linked to the Druze minority that threatened to unravel the country’s post-war transition.
The conflict had drawn airstrikes against Syrian forces by neighboring Israel in defense of the Druze before a truce — mediated by the U.S., Turkey and Arab countries and announced Wednesday — halted most of the fighting.
However, Syrian state media said Thursday that Druze militiamen had launched revenge attacks on Sunni Bedouin communities, leading to a wave of their displacement. There were some reports of renewed clashes.
Bedouin clans had fought on the government side, while the Israeli military came to the assistance of the Druze, who form a substantial community in Israel, where they are seen as a loyal minority and where they often serve in the military.
A new ceasefire deal
Under the latest truce, reached Wednesday after a previous agreement unraveled, Druze factions and clerics have been appointed to maintain internal security in Sweida, Syria’s interim President Ahmad al-Sharaa said in an address broadcast early Thursday.
Israeli Prime Minister vowed Thursday to keep southern Syria demilitarized and to protect the Druze community. “This will also be the continuation of our policy,†he said.
In a major escalation of its involvement in the conflict, Israel on Wednesday had struck the Syrian Defense Ministry headquarters in central Damascus.
Convoys of government forces started withdrawing from Sweida overnight, Syrian state media reported, saying it was in line with the ceasefire deal and that the military operation against the Druze factions had ended.
The truce was announced by Syria’s Interior Ministry and in a video message by a Druze religious leader. The after being dismissed by prominent Druze cleric Sheikh Hikmat Al-Hijri.
The Syrian government has not released any casualty counts from the fighting.
The Britain-based war monitor Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said at least 516 fighters and civilians were killed on both sides over four days of deadly clashes. The monitor also said at least 86 civilians killed in “field executions†— mostly Druze Syrians killed by government forces and their allies — and that at least three Bedouin civilians were killed in revenge attacks Thursday by Druze militiamen.
Looting homes and killing civilians
Turkey’s Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan and intelligence chief Ä°brahim Kalin held a series of diplomatic and security contacts to deescalate the clashes, a Turkish official said Thursday. They worked with the U.S. mediators and regional officials and leaders, including Lebanese Druze leader Walid Jumblatt, said the official who requested anonymity to discuss the negotiations.
The escalation in Syria began with tit-for-tat kidnappings and attacks between in Sweida. Government forces that intervened to restore order militias, but also in some cases attacked civilians.
Video circulated on social media showing government forces and allies humiliating Druze clerics and residents, looting homes and killing civilians hiding inside their houses. Syrian Druze from Sweida told The Associated Press that several family members who were unarmed had been attacked or killed.
Interim President al-Sharaa said the Druze were an â€integral part†of Syria, protected under the law.
“We are committed to holding accountable those who wronged our Druze brethren,” al-Sharaa said.
‘Militant sectarianism’
The over how to approach al-Sharaa’s de facto Islamist rule after largely celebrating when his forces ousted former President Bashar Assad and the Assad family’s decades-long autocratic rule. They feared persecution after attacks from the militant Islamic State group and al-Qaida affiliates during Syria’s 14-year civil war.
Issam al-Reis, a senior military adviser with Etana, a Syrian research group, said the lack of “effective state-led negotiations†could sow further divisions between the Druze community with the Sunni Bedouins, who had sometimes also clashed in the past.
“This is leading to militant sectarianism, which is dangerous,” he said, adding it’s a sign that the government needs to speed up its integration of other sects into the Syrian army to make it a more unifying force and help resolve sectarian tensions.
“There have been agreements and talks about this with different communities, but until now none of this has been implemented,†he said.
The began as a 10th-century offshoot of Ismailism, a branch of Shiite Islam. More than half of the roughly 1 million Druze worldwide live in Syria. Most of the other Druze live in Lebanon and Israel, including in the Golan Heights, which Israel captured from Syria in the 1967 Mideast War and annexed in 1981.
Druze cross the border fence
An Israeli security official said Israel is strengthening fences along the Golan border to prevent people from crossing into Syrian territory.
Thousands of Druze residents in the Israeli-controlled Golan converged on the border on Wednesday after hearing of the sectarian clashes inside Syria.
Israeli media said that dozens of people forced their way into Syria – in hopes of helping fellow Druze and in some cases to visit relatives that they normally are unable to see.
The security official, speaking on condition of anonymity under military briefing rules, said that soldiers had returned dozens of people who crossed into Syria, while security forces were also returning an unknown number of Druze Syrians who crossed into the Israeli side. It was not known how many people remained on each side of the border.
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Associated Press writer Suzan Fraser in Ankara, Turkey, and Fernanda Pesce in Madjal Shams, Golan Heights contributed to this report.
