Turkey has backed a US-brokered ceasefire deal between Syria’s interim government and Israel that led to the redeployment of Syrian interior ministry forces in Sweida on Saturday, after a week of sectarian bloodshed left at least 718 people dead in the Druze-majority province.
The truce, negotiated by US envoy Tom Barrack with the support of Turkey and Jordan, came after Israeli airstrikes earlier in the week targeted Syrian military positions in both Damascus and Sweida. Israel accused Syrian forces of carrying out summary executions and other abuses against Druze civilians during their brief deployment to the south.
Washington’s goal was to de-escalate the crisis and prevent further Israeli intervention while preserving the authority of Syria’s interim president, Ahmed al-Sharaa, whose Sunni Islamist-led government has struggled to contain the violence.
In a televised address Saturday, al-Sharaa thanked the United States, Turkey and Arab states for their role in securing the ceasefire and pledged to protect Syria’s religious and ethnic minorities. “The Syrian state is committed to protecting all minorities and communities in the country,” he said, condemning the killings in Sweida.
But fighting persisted on Saturday despite the ceasefire announcement. Agence France-Presse correspondents reported ongoing gunfire, explosions and rocket fire near the city of Sweida as Druze militias battled armed Bedouin who had taken over several neighborhoods the day before.
According to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR), 718 people have been killed since violence erupted on July 13. The dead include 146 Druze fighters, 245 Druze civilians (165 of whom were summarily executed), 287 government troops and 18 Bedouin fighters. Fifteen additional government soldiers were killed in the Israeli strikes. SOHR also said three Bedouin were summarily executed by Druze forces.
Syrian security forces began setting up checkpoints in and around Sweida on Saturday to prevent further reinforcements from reaching the conflict zone. Bedouin tribal fighters, many of them described by Druze commanders as Islamist volunteers, were reportedly supported by the interim government and had advanced on Friday shouting religious slogans. One armed tribesman told AFP they had come to “slaughter” the Druze.
The humanitarian toll has been devastating. Sweida’s main hospital has received more than 400 bodies since Monday, according to Dr. Omar Obeid. “There is no more room in the morgue. The bodies are in the street,” he said. The International Committee of the Red Cross warned that power outages and overcrowded morgues were compounding the crisis.
“The humanitarian situation in Sweida is critical. People are running out of everything,” said Stephan Sakalian, head of the ICRC delegation in Syria. The International Organization for Migration said nearly 80,000 people have fled their homes since the fighting began.
The latest violence was sparked by the kidnapping of a Druze vegetable merchant by Bedouin tribesmen, which escalated into retaliatory abductions and street battles. Armed reinforcements from across Syria poured into the province, with Bedouin fighters seizing parts of towns and Druze citizens of Israel reportedly crossing into Syria to join the fight after the Israeli army briefly opened a border gate.
While Israel has pledged humanitarian support to the Druze — including $600,000 in food and medical aid — critics argue that its strikes were also aimed at weakening Syria’s interim government, which came to power after the fall of Bashar al-Assad in December and maintains historic ties to former Islamist opposition groups.
© Agence France-Presse