SWEIDA: Calm returned to southern Syria’s Sweida province on Sunday after a week of sectarian violence between Druze fighters and rival groups that killed more than 1,100 people.
A ceasefire announced on Saturday appeared to be holding after earlier agreements failed to end fighting between longtime rivals the Druze and the Bedouin that spiralled to draw in government forces, the Israeli military and armed tribes from other parts of Syria.
AFP correspondents on the outskirts of Sweida city reported hearing no clashes on Sunday morning, with government forces deployed in some locations in the province to enforce the truce.
The first humanitarian aid convoy entered the city on Sunday, Red Crescent official Omar Al-Malki said, adding that it would be followed by others.
He said the convoy came “in coordination with the government bodies and the local authorities in Sweida,” which are controlled by the Druze.
The Syrian government meanwhile said a Druze group blocked its own convoy from entering the city.
Clashes halted
Hanadi Obeid, a 39-year-old doctor, told AFP that “the city hasn’t seen calm like this in a week.”
The interior ministry said overnight that Sweida city was “evacuated of all tribal fighters, and clashes within the city’s neighborhoods were halted.”
Interim President Ahmed Al-Sharaa had on Saturday announced a ceasefire in Sweida and renewed a pledge to protect Syria’s ethnic and religious minorities in the face of the latest sectarian violence since the rebels overthrew longtime ruler Bashar Assad in December.
A spokesman for Syria’s tribal and clan council told Al Jazeera late Saturday that fighters had left the city “in response to the call of the presidency and the terms of the agreement.”
A medic inside Sweida told AFP by telephone on Sunday that “the situation is totally calm... We aren’t hearing clashes.”
Residents of Sweida city, who number at about 150,000, have been holed up in their homes without electricity and water, and food supplies have also been scarce.
An AFP photographer said the morgue at Sweida’s main hospital was full and bodies were lying on the ground outside the building.
The United Nations migration agency said more than 128,000 people in Sweida province have been displaced by the violence.
Syria at critical juncture
US special envoy to Syria Tom Barrack said Sunday that the country stood at a “critical juncture,” adding that “peace and dialogue must prevail — and prevail now.”
“All factions must immediately lay down their arms, cease hostilities, and abandon cycles of tribal vengeance,” he wrote on X, saying “brutal acts by warring factions on the ground undermine the government’s authority and disrupt any semblance of order.”
Sharaa’s announcement Saturday came hours after the United States said it had negotiated a ceasefire between Syria’s government and Israel, which had bombed government forces in both Sweida and Damascus earlier in the week.
Israel, which has its own Druze community, has said it was acting in defense of the group, as well as to enforce its demands for the total demilitarization of Syria’s south.
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Saturday urged the Syrian government’s security forces to prevent jihadists from entering and “carrying out massacres” in the south, and called on Damascus to “bring to justice anyone guilty of atrocities including those in their own ranks.”
