Syrian government, Druze announce new ceasefire after rare Israeli strikes hit military HQ

Damascus: 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 drawn military intervention by powerful neighbour Israel.

Convoys of government forces began withdrawing from the city of Sweida, but it was not immediately clear if the agreement – announced on Wednesday, Damascus time, by Syria’s Interior Ministry and in a video message by a Druze religious leader – would hold.

A previous ceasefire announced on Tuesday quickly fell apart, and a prominent Druze leader, Sheikh Hikmat Al-Hijri, disavowed the new agreement.

Israeli strikes continued after the ceasefire announcement.

The announcement came after Israel launched rare airstrikes in the heart of Damascus, an escalation in a campaign that it said was intended to defend the Druze and 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 escalation in Syria began with tit-for-tat kidnappings and attacks between local Sunni Bedouin tribes and Druze armed factions in the southern province of Sweida. Government forces that intervened to restore order clashed with the Druze militias, but also in some cases attacked civilians.

A person passes by the site of an Israeli airstrike on Syria’s defence ministry headquarters in Damascus, Syria. Credit: Getty Images

The violence appeared to be the most serious threat yet to efforts by Syria’s new rulers to consolidate control of the country after a rebel offensive led by Islamist insurgent groups ousted longtime despotic leader Bashar al-Assad in December, ending a nearly 14-year civil war.

The new, primarily Sunni Muslim, authorities have faced suspicion from religious and ethnic minorities, especially after clashes between government forces and pro-Assad armed groups in March spiralled into sectarian revenge attacks. Hundreds of civilians from the Alawite religious minority, to which Assad belongs, were killed.

No official casualty figures have been released for the latest fighting since Monday, when the Interior Ministry said 30 people had been killed. The UK-based war monitor Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said more than 300 people had been killed as of Wednesday morning, including four children, eight women and 165 soldiers and security forces.

Israel has launched dozens of strikes targeting government troops and convoys heading into Sweida, and on Wednesday struck the Syrian Defence Ministry headquarters next to a busy square in Damascus that became a gathering point after Assad’s fall.

A member of Syria’s civil defence works in the aftermath of an Israeli airstrike on Syria’s defence ministry headquarters on Wednesday.Credit: Getty Images

That strike killed three people and injured 34, Syrian officials said. Another Israeli strike hit near the presidential palace in the hills outside Damascus.

Israeli Defence Minister Israel Katz said after the initial Damascus airstrike in a post on X that the “painful blows have begun”.

Israel has taken an aggressive stance toward Syria’s new leaders, saying it doesn’t want Islamist militants near its borders. Israeli forces have seized a United Nations-patrolled buffer zone on Syrian territory along the border with the Golan Heights and launched hundreds of airstrikes on military sites in Syria.

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”.

An Israeli military official who spoke on condition of anonymity in line with regulations said the army was preparing for a “multitude of scenarios” and that a brigade, normally comprising thousands of soldiers, was being pulled out of Gaza and sent to the Golan Heights.

Syria’s Defence Ministry had earlier blamed militias in the Druze-majority area of Sweida for violating the ceasefire agreement reached on Tuesday.

Reports of attacks on civilians continued to surface, and Druze with family members in the conflict zone searched desperately for information about their fate amid communication blackouts.

In Jaramana near the Syrian capital, Evelyn Azzam, 20, said she feared that her husband, Robert Kiwan, 23, was dead. The newlyweds live in the Damascus suburb, but Kiwan would commute to Sweida for work and got trapped there when the clashes erupted.

Azzam said she was on the phone with Kiwan when security forces questioned him and a colleague about whether they were affiliated with Druze militias.

When her husband’s colleague raised his voice, she heard a gunshot. Kiwan was then shot while trying to appeal.

“They shot my husband in the hip, from what I could gather,” she said, struggling to hold back tears. “The ambulance took him to the hospital. Since then, we have no idea what has happened.”

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.

Demonstrators in Damascus wave flags during a rally against Israeli intervention in Syria.Credit: Getty Images

Videos surfaced on social media of government-affiliated fighters forcibly shaving the moustaches 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 bodies. AP reporters in the area saw burned and looted houses.

The observatory said at least 27 people were killed in “field executions”.

Interim President Ahmad al-Sharaa issued a statement on Wednesday condemning the violations and vowing that perpetrators would be punished.

“These criminal and illegal actions cannot be accepted under any circumstances, and completely contradicts the principles that the Syrian state is built on,” the statement read.

Druze in the Golan gathered along the border fence to protest the violence against Druze in Syria.

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Wednesday that Washington was “very concerned” about the Israel-Syria violence, which he attributed to a “misunderstanding,” and had been in touch with both sides in an effort to restore calm.

AP

Get to the heart of what’s happening with climate change and the environment. Sign up for our fortnightly Environment newsletter.