Syrian troops pulled out of the Druze heartland of Sweida on orders from the Islamist-led government, following days of deadly clashes that killed more than 500 people, according to a war monitor.
The southern province has been gripped by deadly sectarian bloodshed since Sunday, with hundreds reportedly killed in clashes pitting Druze fighters against Sunni Bedouin tribes and the army and its allies.
The city of Sweida was a shadow of its former self on Thursday, AFP correspondents on the ground reported, with shops looted, homes burnt and bodies in the streets.
“What I saw of the city looked as if it had just emerged from a flood or a natural disaster,” Hanadi Obeid, a 39-year-old doctor, told AFP.
In a televised speech, interim President Ahmed al-Sharaa said community leaders would resume control over security in Sweida “based on the supreme national interest”, after the deployment of government troops on Tuesday only fuelled the intercommunal bloodshed and prompted Israeli military intervention.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said 594 people had been killed in clashes in Sweida province since Sunday.
The UN’s humanitarian agency, OCHA, said “nearly 2,000 families have been displaced” by the violence across the southern province.
Israel had hammered government troops with air strikes during their brief deployment in Sweida and also struck targets in and around Damascus, including the military headquarters, warning that its attacks would intensify until the government pulled back.
The Observatory reported three people killed in Damascus by the Israeli strikes.
– Promise of ‘protection’ –
Sharaa, whose Islamist-led interim government has had troubled relations with minority groups since it toppled longtime president Bashar al-Assad in December, also pledged to protect the Druze.
“We are keen on holding accountable those who transgressed and abused our Druze people, as they are under the protection and responsibility of the state,” he said.
March saw massacres of more than 1,700 mostly Alawite civilians in their heartland on the Mediterranean coast, with government-affiliated groups blamed for most of the killings.
Government forces also battled Druze fighters in Sweida and near Damascus in April and May, leaving more than 100 people dead.
Government troops had entered Sweida on Tuesday with the stated aim of overseeing a truce, following days of deadly sectarian clashes.
But witnesses said government forces instead joined the Bedouin in attacking Druze fighters and civilians.
Addressing the Druze, Sharaa attempted to reassure the minority community, vowing that “protecting your rights and freedom is one of our priorities”.
– US mediation –
The Syrian president hit out at Israel’s military intervention, saying it would have pushed “matters to a large-scale escalation, except for the effective intervention of American, Arab and Turkish mediation, which saved the region from an unknown fate”.
The United States — a close ally of Israel that has been trying to reboot its relationship with Syria — said late Wednesday that an agreement had been reached to restore calm in the area, urging “all parties to deliver on the commitments they have made”.
On Thursday, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said Syria had agreed to withdraw its troops and that the de-escalation “seems to be continuing”.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Thursday that the ceasefire was a result of his country’s “powerful action”, while Leavitt sought to claim credit for Washington.
A US State Department spokesperson said that Washington “did not support (the) recent Israeli strikes”.
Israel, which has its own Druze community, has presented itself as a defender of the group, although some analysts say that is a pretext for pursuing its own military goal of keeping Syrian government forces away from the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights.
On Thursday, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan accused Israel of “using the Druze as an excuse” for “expanding its banditry” in Syria.
Because of the violence, dozens of Druze gathered in the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights on Thursday hoping to catch a glimpse of relatives on the Syrian-held side who might try to cross the barbed-wire frontier.
Qamar Abu Saleh, a 36-year-old educator, said some people “opened the fence and entered, and people from Syria also started crossing here”.
“It was like a dream, and we still can’t believe it happened.”
Despite having initiated diplomatic contact with a first face-to-face meeting in Azerbaijan earlier this month, Israel remains extremely wary of Syria’s new rulers, including Sharaa whose Hayat Tahrir al-Sham movement was once linked to Al-Qaeda.
burs-nad/dcp/smw
