Israel said it bombed Syrian army headquarters in Damascus on Wednesday after warning the Islamist-led government to leave the Druze minority alone in its Sweida heartland where a monitor says sectarian clashes have killed nearly 250 people.
Syrian government forces entered the majority-Druze city of Sweida on Tuesday with the stated aim of overseeing a ceasefire agreed with Druze community leaders after clashes with local Bedouin tribes left more than 100 people dead.
However, witnesses reported that the government forces joined with the Bedouin in attacking Druze fighters and civilians in a bloody rampage through the city.
The fighting marks the most serious outbreak of violence in Syria since government forces battled Druze fighters in Sweida province and near Damascus in April and May leaving more than 100 people dead.
The Islamist-led authorities have had strained relations with Syria’s patchwork of religious and ethnic minorities since they toppled longtime leader Bashar al-Assad in December.
Israeli Defence Minister Israel Katz called on Damascus to “leave the Druze in Sweida alone”.
“As we have made clear and warned, Israel will not abandon the Druze in Syria and will enforce the demilitarisation policy we have decided on,” he said in a statement.
Syrian forces should withdraw, he added, and promised no let-up in Israeli military attacks until that happened, saying Israel would “raise the level of responses against the regime if the message is not understood”.
Shortly afterwards, the Israeli military said it had hit Syria’s military headquarters in Damascus.
“A short while ago, the (Israeli military) struck the entrance of the Syrian regime’s military headquarters in the area of Damascus in Syria,” it said in a statement.
Syrian state television reported that two people were wounded in central Damascus, without giving a more precise location.
‘Existential battle’
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in February that southern Syria must be completely demilitarised, warning that Israel would not accept the presence of forces of the Islamist-led government near territory it controls.
Israel said it was sending more troops to the armistice line between the occupied Golan Heights and Syrian-controlled territory.
“In accordance with the situational assessment, the (Israeli military) has decided to reinforce its forces in the area of the Syrian border,” a statement said.
The head of the Druze community in Israel, Sheikh Mowafaq Tarif, called the situation “an existential battle for the Druze community”.
According to the Observatory, witnesses and Druze armed groups, government forces took part in fighting alongside the Bedouin against the Druze.
Sporadic gunfire continued to ring out in the city on Wednesday, an AFP correspondent reported.
Columns of smoke were seen rising from several areas amid the sound of shelling.
The correspondent counted the bodies of around 30 combatants, some in plain clothes and some in military uniform.
The Suwayda 24 news website reported “intense shelling with heavy artillery and mortars” .
The Syrian defence ministry accused “outlaw groups” of attacking its forces inside the city, saying they are now “continuing to respond to the sources of fire”.
Death toll nears 250
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said at least 248 people had been killed in Sweida province since the violence erupted on Sunday.
The Britain-based watchdog said 28 civilians were among 92 Druze killed, 21 of them “in summary executions by government forces”.
At least 138 Syrian security personnel were killed, along with 18 allied Bedouin fighters, it added.
The Bedouin and the Druze have been at loggerheads for decades. The latest violence erupted after the kidnapping of a Druze vegetable merchant triggered tit-for-tat abductions, the Observatory said.
Since they toppled longtime leader Bashar al-Assad in December, Syria’s Islamist authorities have been accused repeatedly of trampling over the rights of the country’s religious and ethnic minorities.
Israel has presented itself as a defender of the Druze, although some analysts have said that is just a pretext for pursuing its own military goal of keeping government forces as far from the border as possible.
(FRANCE 24 with AFP)
Clashes between Syrian government troops and local Druze fighters resumed in the southern Druze city of Sweida early on Wednesday, collapsing a ceasefire announced just hours earlier that aimed to put an end to days of deadly sectarian bloodshed.
The outbreak of violence in the predominantly Druze province in southern Syria has highlighted frictions among Syria’s diverse communities, with minorities feeling deep distrust towards the Islamist-led government now in power.
Syrian troops were dispatched to the province on Monday to quell fighting between Druze fighters and Bedouin armed men but ended up clashing with the Druze militias. The fighting drew in Israel, which has now carried out three days of air strikes on government forces, ostensibly with the aim of protecting the Druze.
Israel strikes Syria’s Sweida, Damascus
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Israel’s military said it struck the entrance to the Syrian defence ministry in Damascus on Wednesday, stepping up attacks on the Islamist-led authorities.
Security sources from within the defence ministry told Reuters that at least two drone strikes had hit the building and that officers were taking cover in the basement. State-owned Elekhbariya TV said the Israeli strike wounded two civilians.
The Druze religious sect began as a 10th-century offshoot of Ismailism, a branch of Shiite Islam. More than half the roughly 1 million Druze worldwide live in Syria. Most of the other Druze live in Lebanon and Israel, including in the Golan Heights, which Israel captured from Syria in the 1967 Mideast War and annexed in 1981.
Syria : government forces enter Sweida
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A ceasefire announced by Syria’s defence ministry on Tuesday night was short-lived.
Local news outlet Sweida24 said the city of Sweida and nearby villages were coming under heavy artillery and mortar fire early on Wednesday. Syria’s defence ministry, in a statement carried by state news agency SANA, blamed outlaw groups in Sweida for breaching the truce.
The defence ministry called on residents of the city to stay indoors.
No official casualty figures have been released since Monday, when the Syrian Interior Ministry said 30 people had been killed. The UK-based war monitor Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said more than 250 people had been killed as of Wednesday morning, including four children, five women and 138 soldiers and security forces.
The observatory said at least 21 people were killed in “field executions.”
Civilians and Reuters reporters in the city said that government forces had looted and burned homes, stealing cars and furniture from homes on Tuesday. One man showed a Reuters reporter the body of his brother, who had been shot in the head inside their home.
Israel’s Defence Minister Israel Katz on Wednesday warned the Syrian government to “leave Druze alone” and that the military would continue to strike Syrian government forces until they pulled back.
US Syria envoy Tom Barrack said on Tuesday that the United States was in contact with all sides “to navigate towards calm and integration“.
(FRANCE 24 with Reuters and AP)
