Syrian government and Druze minority leaders announce a new ceasefire

Syrian government officials and leaders in the Druze religious minority announced a renewed ceasefire on Wednesday (July 16) after days of clashes that have threatened to unravel the country’s postwar political transition and drawn military intervention by powerful neighbor Israel.

Convoys of government forces began withdrawing from the city of Sweida, but it was not immediately clear if the agreement, announced by Syria’s Interior Ministry and in a video message by a Druze religious leader, would hold. A previous ceasefire announced on Tuesday (July 15) quickly fell apart, and a prominent Druze leader, Sheikh Hikmat Al-Hijri, disavowed the new agreement.

Israeli strikes continued after the ceasefire announcement.

The announcement came after Israel launched rare airstrikes in the heart of Damascus, an escalation in a campaign that it said was intended to defend the Druze and push Islamic militants away from its border. The Druze form a substantial community in Israel as well as in Syria and are seen in Israel as a loyal minority, often serving in the military.

The escalation in Syria began with tit-for-tat kidnappings and attacks between local Sunni Bedouin tribes and Druze armed factions in the southern province of Sweida. Government forces that intervened to restore order clashed with the Druze militias, but also in some cases attacked civilians.

The violence appeared to be the most serious threat yet to efforts by Syria’s new rulers to consolidate control of the country after a rebel offensive led by Islamist insurgent groups ousted longtime despotic leader Bashar Assad in December, ending a nearly 14-year civil war.

Protecting Druze citizens is ‘our priority’: President Sharaa

Interim President Ahmad al-Sharaa, in footage on state television early on Thursday (July 17), called the Druze an integral part of Syria and denounced Israel’s actions as sowing division.

“We affirm that protecting your rights and freedoms is among our top priorities,” he said, specifically addressing Druze people in Syria. “We reject any attempt — foreign or domestic — to sow division within our ranks. We are all partners in this land, and we will not allow any group to distort the beautiful image that Syria and its diversity represent.”

He said Israel sought to break Syrian unity and turn the country into a theater of chaos but that Syrians were rejecting division.

He said Syrians did not fear renewed war but sought the path of Syrian interest over destruction. “We assigned local factions and Druze spiritual leaders the responsibility of maintaining security in [Sweida], recognizing the gravity of the situation and the need to avoid dragging the country” into a new war, he said.

Syria’s new, primarily Sunni Muslim, authorities have faced suspicion from religious and ethnic minorities, especially after clashes between government forces and pro-Assad armed groups in March spiraled into sectarian revenge attacks. Hundreds of civilians from the Alawite religious minority, to which Assad belongs, were killed.

No official casualty figures have been released for the latest fighting since Monday (July 14), when the Interior Ministry said 30 people had been killed. The U.K.-based war monitor Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said more than 300 people had been killed as of Wednesday (July 16) morning, including four children, eight women and 165 soldiers and security forces.

Israel has launched dozens of strikes targeting government troops and convoys heading into Sweida, and on Wednesday (July 16) struck the Syrian Defence Ministry headquarters next to a busy square in Damascus that became a gathering point after Assad’s fall.

That strike killed three people and injured 34, Syrian officials said. Another Israeli strike hit near the presidential palace in the hills outside Damascus.

Israeli Defence Minister Israel Katz said after the initial Damascus airstrike in a post on X that the “painful blows have begun.”

Israel has taken an aggressive stance toward Syria’s new leaders, saying it doesn’t want Islamist militants near its borders. Israeli forces have seized a U.N.-patrolled buffer zone on Syrian territory along the border with the Golan Heights and launched hundreds of airstrikes on military sites in Syria.

Mr. Katz said in a statement that the Israeli Army “will continue to attack regime forces until they withdraw from the area — and will also soon raise the bar of responses against the regime if the message is not understood.”

An Israeli military official who spoke on condition of anonymity in line with regulations said the Army was preparing for a “multitude of scenarios” and that a brigade, normally comprising thousands of soldiers, was being pulled out of Gaza and sent to the Golan Heights.

Syria’s Defence Ministry had earlier blamed militias in the Druze-majority area of Sweida for violating the ceasefire agreement reached Tuesday.

Reports of attacks on civilians continued to surface, and Druze with family members in the conflict zone searched desperately for information about their fate.

In Jaramana, near the Syrian capital, Evelyn Azzam, 20, said she feared that her husband, Robert Kiwan, 23, was dead. The newlyweds live in the Damascus suburb, but Kiwan commuted to Sweida for work and was trapped there when the clashes erupted.

Ms. Azzam said she was on the phone with Kiwan when security forces questioned him and a colleague about whether they were affiliated with Druze militias. When her husband’s colleague raised his voice, she heard a gunshot. Kiwan was then shot while trying to appeal.

“They shot my husband in the hip, from what I could gather,” she said, struggling to hold back tears. “The ambulance took him to the hospital. Since then, we have no idea what has happened.”

A Syrian Druze from Sweida living in the United Arab Emirates said her mother, father and sister were hiding in a basement in their home near the hospital, where they could hear the sound of shelling and bullets outside. She spoke on condition of anonymity out of fear her family might be targeted.

She had struggled to reach them, but when she did, she said, “I heard them cry. I have never heard them this way before.”

Another Druze woman living in the UAE with family members in Sweida, who also spoke on condition of anonymity, said a cousin told her that a house where their relatives lived had been burned down with everyone inside it.

It reminded her of when the Islamic State extremist group attacked Sweida in 2018, she said. Her uncle was among many civilians there who had taken up arms to fight back while Assad’s forces stood aside. He was killed in the fighting.

“It’s the same right now,” she told The Associated Press. The Druze fighters, she said, are “just people who are protecting their province and their families”.

The Druze religious sect began as a 10th-century offshoot of Ismailism, a branch of Shiite Islam. More than half of 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.

Videos surfaced on social media of government-affiliated fighters forcibly shaving the mustaches of Druze sheikhs and stepping on Druze flags and pictures of religious clerics. Other videos showed Druze fighters beating captured government forces and posing by their bodies. AP reporters in the area saw burned and looted houses.

The observatory said at least 27 people were killed in “field executions.”

Druze in the Golan gathered along the border fence to protest the violence against Druze in Syria.

U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said on Wednesday that Washington is “very concerned” about the Israel-Syria violence, which he attributed to a “misunderstanding,” and has been in touch with both sides in an effort to restore calm.