DAMASCUS (Reuters) -Hundreds of Bedouin civilians were evacuated from Syria’s predominantly Druze city of Sweida on Monday as part of a U.S.-backed truce meant to end fighting that has killed hundreds of people, state media and witnesses said.
With hundreds reported killed, the violence in the southern province of Sweida has posed a major test for interim President Ahmed al-Sharaa, drawing Israeli airstrikes on his Islamist-led government last week and deepening fissures in a country fractured by 14 years of sectarian civil war.
A ceasefire took hold on Sunday as interior ministry security forces deployed on Sweida’s outskirts. Interior Minister Anas Khattab said on Sunday the truce would allow for the release of hostages and detainees held by the warring sides.
On Monday morning, ambulances, trucks and buses ferried hundreds of Bedouin civilians including women, children and wounded people out of Sweida to nearby displacement camps, Reuters footage showed.
The initial batch included some 300 Bedouins and a second group of about 550 civilians will be evacuated within the next 24 hours if the situation remains calm, said Shoaib Asfour, a member of the Syrian security forces overseeing the evacuation.
The next phase would see the evacuation of Bedouin fighters detained by Druze militias and the transfer of bodies of Bedouins killed in the fighting, Asfour said.
Syria’s state news agency said a total of 1,500 Bedouins would be evacuated from Sweida city.
Citing Ahmed al-Dalati, head of Syria’s internal security forces in Sweida, state media said those forces would also facilitate the return to Sweida of others displaced from it.
According to the United Nations, at least 93,000 people have been uprooted by the fighting – most of them within Sweida province but others to Daraa province to the west, or north to the countryside around the capital Damascus.
The U.N. said on Sunday that humanitarian convoys with medical supplies had been waiting to enter Sweida for two days but were not granted access. It said only a convoy of the Syrian Arab Red Crescent had been allowed to enter.
PRESSURES ON SYRIA’S MOSAIC
The Druze are a small but influential minority in Syria, Israel and Lebanon who follow a religion that is an offshoot of a branch of Islam. Some ultra-conservative Sunni Muslims deem Druze beliefs to be heretical.
The fighting began a week ago with clashes between Bedouin and Druze fighters. Damascus sent troops to quell the fighting, but they were drawn into the violence and accused of widespread violations against the Druze.
Residents of Sweida said friends and neighbours were shot at close range in their homes or in the streets by Syrian troops, identified by their fatigues and insignia.
Luna Albassit, a Druze activist in the town of Shahba in Sweida province, said the situation after so much bloodshed remained tense despite the end to clashes late on Sunday.
“People were killed in the streets, in their homes, they were humiliated and it was in the name of the state,” she said.
Hamzah Mustafa, Syria’s information minister, told Reuters last week that the Damascus government strongly condemned all abuses and rejected sectarian violence in all its forms.
Interim President al-Sharaa has promised to protect the rights of Druze and hold to account those who committed violations against “our Druze people”.
He has blamed the violence on “outlaw groups”.
After Israel bombed Syrian government forces in Sweida and hit the defence ministry in Damascus last week, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu demanded the demilitarisation of southern Syrian territory near the border, stretching from the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights to the Druze Mountain, east of Sweida.
He also said Israel would protect the Druze.
(Reporting by Suleiman al-Khalidi in Syria; Additional reporting by Maya Gebeily in Beirut; writing by Maya Gebeily; editing by Tom Perry and Mark Heinrich)
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