Syrian government officials and leaders in the Druze religious minority announced a renewed ceasefire after days of clashes that have threatened to unravel the country’s postwar political transition and have drawn intervention by Syria’s powerful neighbor, Israel.
The new agreement was announced by Syrian Interior Ministry and in a video message by a Druze religious leader.
It was not immediately clear if it would hold. A previous ceasefire announced the day before quickly fell apart.A prominent Druze leader, Sheikh Hikmat Al-Hijri, disavowed the new agreement entered into by other Druze officials.
The announcement came after Israel launched a series of rare airstrikes in the heart of Damascus, part of a campaign that it said is intended to defend the Druze and to 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 latest escalation in Syria began with tit-for-tat kidnappings and attacks between local Sunni Bedouin tribes and Druze armed factions in the southern province. Government forces that intervened to restore order then clashed with the Druze.
The escalating violence has appeared to be the most serious threat yet to the ability of 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, bringing an end to a nearly 14-year civil war.
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 dead bodies.
No official casualty figures have been released since Monday, when the Syrian Interior Ministry said that 30 people had been killed.
The UK-based war monitor Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said that more than 300 people had been killed as of this morning, including four children, eight women and 165 soldiers and security forces. The observatory said that at least 27 people were killed in “field executions.”
Israel has launched dozens of strikes targeting government troops and convoys heading into Sweida, and today, struck the Syrian Defense Ministry headquarters in the heart of Damascus.
That strike killed one person and injured 18, Syrian officials said. Another strike hit near the presidential palace in the hills outside of Damascus.
Israeli Defense Minister, Israel Katz said after the airstrike in a post on X that the “painful blows have begun.”
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.”
Violations Condemned
Meanwhile, Interim President of Syria, Ahmed al-Sharaa issued a statement condemning the violations.
The statement read, “These criminal and illegal actions cannot be accepted under any circumstances, and completely contradicts the principles that the Syrian state is built on,” vowing that perpetrators would be punished.
Druze in the Golan gathered along the border fence to protest the violence against Druze in Syria.
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.
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