Syria announces ceasefire after latest outbreak of deadly sectarian violence

BUSRA AL-HARIR, Syria (AP) — Syria 's defense minister announced a ceasefire shortly after government forces entered a key city in Sweida province on Tuesday, a day after sectarian clashes killed dozens, while neighboring Israel again launched strikes in the area.

Murhaf Abu Qasra said in a statement that after an agreement with the city's "notables and dignitaries, we will respond only to the sources of fire and deal with any targeting by outlaw groups.”

The latest sectarian violence to emerge under Syria's new leaders began with tit-for-tat kidnappings and attacks between members of local Sunni Bedouin tribes and Druze armed factions in the southern province, a center of the Druze community. Syrian government security forces sent to restore order on Monday clashed with Druze armed groups.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Israel Katz in a joint statement said Israel had struck to “prevent the Syrian regime from harming” the Druze religious minority “and to ensure disarmament in the area adjacent to our borders with Syria.” In Israel, the Druze are seen as a loyal minority and often serve in the armed forces.

Syria's state-run news agency SANA did not give details about the strikes. Britain-based war monitor the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said Israel struck a tank belonging to the Syrian military as forces began to move deeper into Sweida city.

Manhal Yasser Al-Gor, a member of the Interior Ministry forces, was being treated for shrapnel wounds at a local hospital after an Israeli strike hit his convoy.

‘We were entering Sweida to secure the civilians and prevent looting. I was on an armored personnel carrier when the Israeli drone hit us," he said, adding that there were “many casualties.”

Syria's Interior Ministry said Monday that more than 30 people had been killed, but has not updated the figures.

The observatory said Tuesday that 135 people had been killed in 48 hours, including two women and two children. Among them were 19 people killed in “field executions” by government forces, including 12 men in a rest house in the city of Sweida, it said. It did not say how many of the dead were civilians.

There was no immediate Syrian government comment on the allegation of field executions.

Suspicion over Syria's new government

Israel has taken an aggressive stance toward Syria’s new leaders since the fall of former President Bashar Assad in a rebel offensive led by Sunni Islamist insurgent groups in December, saying it does not want militants near its borders. Israeli forces have seized a U.N.-patrolled buffer zone on Syrian territory along the border with the Golan Heights and launched hundreds of airstrikes on military sites in Syria.

Earlier Tuesday, religious leaders of the Druze community in Syria called for armed factions that have been clashing with government forces to surrender their weapons and cooperate with authorities as they entered the provincial capital of Sweida. One of the main religious authorities, however, later released a video statement retracting the call.

The initial statement called for armed factions in Sweida to “cooperate with the forces of the Ministry of Interior" and hand over their weapons. The statement also called for “opening a dialogue with the Syrian government to address the repercussions of the events.”

The commander of internal security in Sweida Governorate, Brig. Gen. Ahmad al-Dalati, welcomed the statement and called for “all religious authorities and social activists to adopt a unified national stance that supports the Ministry of Interior’s measures to extend state authority and achieve security throughout the province.”

But Sheikh Hikmat Al-Hijri, a Druze spiritual leader who has been opposed to the government in Damascus, said in a video message that the statement by Druze leaders had been issued after an agreement with the authorities in Damascus but “they broke the promise and continued the indiscriminate shelling of unarmed civilians.”

“We are being subjected to a total war of annihilation,” he asserted, without giving evidence.

Some videos on social media had showed armed fighters with Druze captives, inciting sectarian slogans and beating them.

Sectarian and revenge attacks

The Druze religious sect began as a 10th-century offshoot of Ismailism, a branch of Shiite Islam. More than half 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.

Clashes on several occasions have broken out between forces loyal to the government and Druze fighters since the fall of Assad.

The latest round of fighting has raised fears of another spiral of sectarian violence. In March, an ambush in another part of Syria on government security forces by fighters loyal to Assad triggered days of sectarian and revenge attacks. Hundreds of civilians were killed, most of them members of the minority Alawite sect that Assad belongs to. A commission was formed to investigate the attacks but has not made its findings public.

The current conflict has also raised concerns about escalating Israeli intervention.

While many Druze in Syria have said they do not want Israel to intervene on their behalf, factions from the Druze minority have also been suspicious of the new authorities in Damascus, particularly after the attacks on Alawites and other minority groups.

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Associated Press writers Kareem Chehayeb in Beirut and Tia Goldenberg in Tel Aviv, Israel, contributed to this report.