DAMASCUS (Reuters) -Syrian leader Ahmed al-Sharaa accused Israel of trying to fracture Syria and promised to protect its Druze minority on Thursday, after U.S. intervention helped end deadly fighting between government forces and Druze fighters in the south.
Overnight, the Islamist-led government’s troops withdrew from the predominantly Druze city of Sweida, where scores of people have been killed in days of conflict pitting Druze fighters against government troops and Bedouin tribes.
One local journalist said he’d counted more than 60 bodies in the streets of Sweida on Thursday morning. Ryan Marouf of Suwayda24 told Reuters he had found a family of 12 people killed in one house, including women and an elderly man.
Violence in Syria escalated sharply on Wednesday as Israel launched airstrikes in Damascus, while also hitting government forces in the south, demanding they withdraw and saying Israel aimed to protect Syrian Druze – part of a small but influential minority that also has followers in Lebanon and Israel.
Israel, which bombed Syria frequently under the rule of ousted President Bashar al-Assad, has struck the country repeatedly this year, describing its new leaders as barely disguised jihadists and saying it will not allow them to deploy forces in areas of southern Syria near its border.
Addressing Syrians on Thursday, interim President Sharaa accused Israel of seeking to “dismantle the unity of our people”, saying it had “consistently targeted our stability and created discord among us since the fall of the former regime”.
Sharaa, who was commander of an al Qaeda faction before cutting ties with the group in 2016, said protecting Druze citizens and their rights was “our priority” and rejected any attempt to drag them into the hands of an “external party”.
He also vowed to hold to account those who committed violations against “our Druze people”.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israel had established a policy demanding the demilitarisation of a swathe of territory near the border, stretching from the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights to the Druze Mountain, east of Sweida.
He reiterated Israel’s policy to protect the Druze.
Syria had sent “its army south of Damascus into an area that was supposed to remain demilitarized, and it began massacring Druze. This was something we could not accept in any way,” he said, adding: “It is a ceasefire achieved through strength”.
The Syrian Network for Human Rights said it had documented 193 dead in four days of fighting, among them medical personnel, women and children.
FIELD EXECUTIONS
The Network’s head Fadel Abdulghany told Reuters the figure included cases of field executions by both sides, Syrians killed by Israeli strikes and others killed in clashes but that it would take time to break down the figures for each category.
A Sweida resident, who asked to be identified only by his first name, Amer, out of fear of reprisals, shared a video of his neighbours slain in their home. It showed a lifeless man in a chair, an elderly man with a gunshot wound to his right temple on the floor and a younger man, face down in a pool of blood.
Amid reports of revenge attacks on Bedouin on Thursday, leading Druze Sheikh Hikmat al-Hajari called for peaceful Bedouin tribes to be respected and not harmed.
One reporter in Sweida this week saw government fighters loot and burn homes, including just before they departed Sweida overnight. Fighters also shaved off the moustaches of Druze men.
Moustaches are worn by Druze sheikhs and many other Druze men as a symbol of religious and cultural identity with spiritual significance.
U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said late on Wednesday the United States had engaged all the parties involved and that steps had been agreed that would end “this troubling and horrifying situation”.
Sharaa credited U.S. Arab and Turkish mediation for saving “the region from an uncertain fate”.
The violence has underlined the challenges that Sharaa faces in stabilizing Syria and exerting centralised rule over the country, despite his warming ties with the United States and his administration’s evolving security contacts with Israel.
Sharaa faces challenges to stitch Syria back together in the face of deep misgivings from groups that fear Islamist rule. In March, mass killings of members of the Alawite minority exacerbated the mistrust.
Israel’s airstrikes on Wednesday blew up part of Syria’s defence ministry and hit near the presidential palace as it vowed to destroy government forces attacking Druze in southern Syria.
The United Nations Security Council will meet on Thursday to address the conflict, diplomats said.
(Reporting by Timour Azhari, Suleiman al-Khalidi and Kinda Makieh in Damascus, Maya Gebeily in Beirut; Steven Scheer in Jerusalem; Ahmed Elimam in Dubai; Muhammad Al Gebaly in Cairo and Reuters bureaux; Writing by Tom Perry and Michael Perry; Editing by Raju Gopalakrishnan, Ros Russell and Sharon Singleton)
