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SYRIAN TROOPS HAVE pulled out of the southern province Druze heartland of Sweida on the orders of the Islamist-led government, following days of deadly clashes and strikes by Israel that killed nearly 600 people, according to a war monitor.
The southern province has been gripped by deadly sectarian bloodshed since Sunday, with hundreds reportedly killed in clashes pitting Druze fighters against Sunni Bedouin tribes and the army and its allies.
A US State Department spokesperson said that Washington “did not support” the Israeli strikes on Syria – the country has been trying to establish fresh relations with the new Syrian government.
The city of Sweida was desolate as of yesterday, AFP correspondents on the ground reported, with shops looted, homes burnt and bodies in the streets.
“What I saw of the city looked as if it had just emerged from a flood or a natural disaster,” Hanadi Obeid, a 39-year-old doctor, told AFP.
Syria’s interim President Ahmed al-Sharaa said in a televised speech that community leaders would resume control over security in Sweida “based on the supreme national interest”, after the deployment of government troops on Tuesday fuelled the intercommunal bloodshed and prompted Israeli military intervention.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said that 594 people had been killed in clashes in Sweida province since Sunday.
The UN’s humanitarian agency, OCHA, said that “nearly 2,000 families have been displaced” by the violence across the province.
The Druze community are an Arabic-speaking religious minority who primarily have communities in Syria, Lebanon and in the occupied Golan Heights.
Israel, which views the Druze as a loyal minority who often serve in the military, claimed it’s trying to protect the community from the new Syrian government in Damascus.
While Israel has presented itself as a defender of the group, its actions have also been viewed as a pretext for pursuing its own military goal of keeping Syrian government forces away from the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights.
In Syria, the Druze have been divided over how to deal with the country’s new leaders, with some advocating for integrating into the new system while others have remained suspicious of the authorities in Damascus and pushed for an autonomous Druze region.
Israel had hammered government troops with air strikes during their brief deployment in Sweida and also struck targets in and around the capital Damascus, including the military headquarters, warning that its attacks would intensify until the government pulled back.
The Observatory reported that three people were killed in Damascus by the Israeli strikes.
Syria’s state-run news agency SANA later reported the first Israeli attack on the area since government forces withdrew, with strikes on the outskirts of Sweida.
The Syrian presidency meanwhile accused Druze fighters in Sweida of violating the ceasefire that led to the withdrawal of government forces.
In a statement, the presidency accused “outlaw forces” of violating the agreement through “horrific violence” against civilians.
The presidency also warned against “continued blatant Israeli interference in Syria’s internal affairs, which only leads to further chaos and destruction and further complicates the regional situation”.
The Syrian president also hit out at Israel’s military intervention, saying that it would have pushed “matters to a large-scale escalation, except for the effective intervention of American, Arab and Turkish mediation, which saved the region from an unknown fate”.
The United States — a close ally of Israel that has been trying to reboot its relationship with Syria — said late Wednesday that an agreement had been reached to restore calm in the area, urging “all parties to deliver on the commitments they have made”.
A US State Department spokesperson said that Washington “did not support (the) recent Israeli strikes”.
Foreign ministers from 11 countries in the region, including the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkey, affirmed their support for the Syrian government in a joint statement released by the United Arab Emirates’ foreign ministry on Thursday.
They strongly condemned the Israeli attacks, describing them as a “blatant violation of international law and a flagrant assault on Syria’s sovereignty”, the statement said.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Thursday that the ceasefire was a result of his country’s “powerful action”.
Israel, which has its own Druze community, has presented itself as a defender of the group, although some analysts say that is a pretext for pursuing its own military goal of keeping Syrian government forces away from the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights.
Dozens of Druze gathered in the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights on Thursday, hoping to catch a glimpse of relatives on the Syrian-held side who might try to cross the barbed-wire frontier.
Qamar Abu Saleh, a 36-year-old educator, said that some people “opened the fence and entered, and people from Syria also started crossing here”.
“It was like a dream, and we still can’t believe it happened.”
© Agence France-Presse
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