Key points
- Israel carries out strikes on Syria
- Govt forces begin withdrawal from Druze-majority city
- Defence minister says forces only firing if fired upon
ISLAMABAD: Syria’s interim President Ahmed al-Sharaa vowed Thursday that those behind violence against the Druze minority would be held accountable after deadly clashes in their southern heartland, saying security responsibility would be returned to local authorities.
“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,” Sharaa said in a televised address.
The surge in violence underlines the challenges facing interim President Ahmed al-Sharaa, who has struggled to assert control over the area near the Israeli border since toppling Bashar al-Assad in December, according to Reuters.
The Syrian government announced on Wednesday a new ceasefire in Sweida and a halt to military operations there after days of violence that killed more than 350 people, according to a war monitor.
Withdrawal
It also said the army had begun withdrawing from the Druze-majority city.
According to AFP, security forces had been deployed there a day earlier with the stated aim of overseeing a previous truce, following days of deadly clashes between Druze fighters and local Bedouin tribes.
Sharaa said that “responsibility” for security in Sweida would be handed to religious elders and some local factions “based on the supreme national interest”.
Before the government intervention, Druze areas were mainly controlled by fighters from the minority.
Addressing the Druze, Sharaa said the community was “a fundamental part of the fabric of this nation… protecting your rights and freedom is one of our priorities”.
March saw clashes with the Alawite minority in their coastal heartland.
Government forces also battled Druze fighters in Sweida province and near Damascus in April and May.
“Outlaw groups”,
Sharaa said “outlaw groups”, whose leaders “rejected dialogue for many months” had committed “crimes against civilians” in recent days.
He said the deployment of defence and interior ministry forces had “succeeded in returning stability” despite the intervention of Israel, which has bombed the country’s south and the capital Damascus.
Israel, which has its own Druze community, has presented itself as a defender of the Syrian minority, although some analysts say that is a pretext for pursuing its own military goal of keeping Syrian government forces as far from their shared frontier as possible.
“Mediation”
“The Israeli entity resorted to a wide-scale targeting of civilian and government facilities,” that 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”, Sharaa said.
He did not specify which Arab countries had mediated.
