Renewed sectarian clashes in southern Syria’s Druze-majority Sweida province killed at least two people on Sunday, according to reports, in the first deadly incident since a ceasefire last month.
According to the state-run Ekhbariya TV, armed groups attacked personnel from Syria’s internal security forces in Sweida, killing one member and wounding others, and fired shells at several villages in the violence-hit southern province.
The report cited a security source as saying the armed groups had violated the ceasefire agreed on in the predominantly Druze region, where factional bloodshed killed hundreds of people last month.
“A member of the General Security forces was killed and seven others were injured… as clashes erupted with local factions around Tal Hadid in the western Sweida countryside,” said the the UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which also reported the death of a “local fighter.”
Tal Hadid is a “key control point” at a relatively high altitude, according to the monitor, allowing whoever controls it to overlook neighboring areas.
Fighting also erupted around the city of Thaala, the Observatory said, “following bombardment of the area with shells and heavy weapons launched from areas under the control of government forces, while the sound of explosions and gunfire was heard in various parts of Sweida city.”
According to the monitor and Sweida locals, Damascus has been imposing a siege on the province, with the Observatory saying the government wants to “force inhabitants to comply.”
The road linking Sweida to Damascus has been cut off since July 20, after the province witnessed deadly clashes between Druze fighters and Sunni Bedouins in July that drew the intervention of government forces in the area.
Israeli forces then carried out strikes on Syrian military forces in southern Syria and government targets in Damascus, with Jerusalem saying it intervened to block Syrian troops from entering southern Syria – which Israel has publicly said should be a demilitarized zone – and to uphold a longstanding commitment to protect the Druze, thousands of whose coreligionists live in Israel.
A ceasefire put an end to the week of bloodshed — which killed 1,400 people, according to the Observatory — but the situation remained tense, flaring into violence again on Sunday.
The Syrian government accuses Druze groups of blocking the main road, but the Observatory said armed groups allied with the government took control of the area and have been blocking travel.
The government said it would investigate the July violence in the province, and a committee in charge of the inquiry held its first meeting on Saturday.
The government under interim President Ahmad al-Sharaa has been struggling to consolidate control since Sharaa led a surprise insurgency that ousted former president Bashar al-Assad in December, ending the Assad family’s decades-long autocratic rule.
Political opponents and ethnic and religious minorities have been suspicious of Sharaa’s de facto Islamist rule and cooperation with affiliated fighters that come from militant groups.
Though his own fighters have roots in al-Qaeda, Sharaa has promised to protect members of Syria’s many sectarian minorities. But that pledge has been challenged, first by mass killings of members of Assad’s Alawite sect in March, and now by the latest violence in the southwest.