Syria’s druze find bodies of loved ones in streets after days of clashes

Syria’s druze find bodies of loved ones in streets after days of clashes

The fighting began with tit-for-tat kidnappings and attacks between local Sunni Bedouin tribes and Druze militias; at least 600 people, combatants and civilians on both sides, were killed, according to a Syrian observatory; more than half of the roughly one million Druze worldwide live in Syria.

A Syrian Druze woman living in the United Arab Emirates frantically tried to keep in touch with her family in her hometown in southern Syria as clashes raged there over the past days.

Her mother, father and sister sent videos of their neighbours fleeing as fighters moved in. The explosions from shelling were non-stop, hitting near their house. Her family took shelter in the basement. When she reached them later in a video call, they said her father was missing. He had gone out during a lull to check the situation and never returned.

Hours later, they learned he had been shot and killed by a sniper. The woman spoke on condition of anonymity.

A ceasefire went into effect late on Wednesday, easing days of brutal clashes in Sweida. Now, members of its Druze community who fled or went into hiding are returning to search for loved ones and count their losses. They are finding homes looted and bloodied bodies of civilians in the streets.

The fighting began with tit-for-tat kidnappings and attacks between local Sunni Bedouin tribes and Druze militias in the majority-Druze Sweida province. Government forces that intervened to restore order clashed with the Druze militias, but also in some cases attacked civilians.

At least 600 people — combatants and civilians on both sides — were killed in four days of clashes, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based war monitor. It said the dead included more than 80 civilians, mostly Druze, who were rounded up by fighters and collectively shot to death in what the monitor called “field executions.”

“These are not individual acts but systemic,” the Observatory’s director Rami Abdul-Rahman said. “All the violations are there. You can see from the bodies that are all over the streets in Sweida clearly show they are shot in the head.”

Retaliatory attacks

In response, Druze militias have targeted Bedouin families in revenge attacks since the ceasefire was reached. Footage shared on Syrian state media shows Bedouin families fleeing with reports of renewed skirmishes in those areas. There was no word on casualties in those attacks.

The Druze religious sect is an offshoot of Ismailism, a branch of Shia Islam. More than half of the roughly one million Druze worldwide live in Syria. The others live in Lebanon and Israel, including in the Golan Heights, which Israel captured from Syria in the 1967 Mideast War and annexed in 1981.

They largely celebrated the downfall in December of Syrian autocrat Bashar Assad but were divided over interim President Ahmad al-Sharaa’s Sunni Islamist rule. The latest violence has left the community more sceptical of Syria’s new leadership and doubtful of peaceful coexistence.

One Syrian-American Druze said of his fear as he watched the clashes from the United States and tried to account for his family and friends whom he had seen in a recent trip to his native city Sweida. Despite internet and communications breakdowns, he tracked down his family. His mother and brother fled because their home was shelled and raided, he said. Their belongings were stolen. Their neighbours’ house was burned down. Two other neighbours were killed, one by shelling, another by stray bullets, he said.

He also pored over online videos of the fighting, finding a harrowing footage. It showed gunmen in military uniform forcing a number of men in civilian clothes to kneel in the street in a well-known roundabout in Sweida. The gunmen then spray the men with automatic fire, their bodies dropping to the ground.

To his horror, he recognised the men. One was a close family friend — another Syrian American on a visit to Sweida from the U.S. The others were the friend’s brother, father, three uncles and a cousin. Friends he reached out told him that government forces had raided the house where they were all staying and took them outside and shot them.

New leadership vows

“We affirm that protecting your rights and freedoms is among our top priorities,” Mr. al-Sharaa said on Thursday, promising to hold perpetrators of civilian killings to account.

But some rights groups accused Syria’s interim government of systematic sectarian violence.

Footage widely circulated on social media showed some of the carnage. One video shows a living room with several bodies on the floor and bullet holes in the walls and sofa.

In another, there are at least nine bloodied bodies in one room of the home of a family that took in people fleeing the fighting. Portraits of Druze notables are visible, smashed on the floor.

Evelyn Azzam, a Druze woman, is searching the Damascus suburb of Jaramana, trying to find out what happened to her husband, Robert Kiwan.

Last week, Kiwan left home for his job in Sweida. He got caught up in the chaos when the clashes erupted. Azzam was on the phone with him. She heard a gunshot when one of the coworkers raised his voice.

Then she heard another gunshot; her husband was shot in the hip. An ambulance took him to a hospital. But she hasn’t heard anything since and doesn’t know if he survived.

“I can’t imagine a world where I would be able to go back and integrate with these monsters,” said a Syrian-American back in the U.S.