With a wave of his hand, Abou Youssef Fahed Haida swept across the downtown landscape of Jaramana. "As you can see, the situation is under control," reassured the sheikh, on the evening of Thursday, May 1, dressed in a black robe and white cap, the traditional attire of Druze clerics. The Druze community is the largest in this suburb bordering Damascus, where Christians and Sunnis also live.

Calm was restored 48 hours after the start of the violent clashes that plunged the city and other predominantly Druze towns into mourning. More than 100 died among the armed forces and combatants, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR). The arrival of reinforcements from the Interior Ministry's General Security Directorate, who supported their colleagues and local Druze militias controlling the neighborhood, ended the fighting. Soldiers from the new army of President Ahmad al-Sharaa's government, shaken by this new violence, were also present. Since then, the usually bustling have been empty. "There are still some tensions," said Fahed Haida in front of one of the many security checkpoints.

Shortly after midnight on April 29, unidentified armed men appeared at the east entrance of the city following the circulation on social media of an audio message deemed blasphemous to Islam and attributed to a figure of the Druze community who denied being behind it. The men were prevented from crossing the al-Naseem checkpoint, triggering heavy gunfire.

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