Agency :
Syrian government forces have withdrawn from the whole of Sweida province after days of sectarian bloodshed in the heartland of the Druze minority, a war monitor and witnesses said Thursday.
The pullout came after Islamist interim President Ahmed al-Sharaa said in a televised address that responsibility” for security in Sweida would be handed to religious elders and some local factions “based on the supreme national interest, reports AFP.
“The Syrian authorities have withdrawn their military forces from the city of Sweida and the the whole province, and Druze fighters have deployed” in their place, Syrian Observatory for Human Rights head Rami Abdel Rahman told AFP.
Government troops who had pulled out of the province told AFP that the order to withdraw came shortly before midnight (2100 GMT Wednesday) and they completed their pullout at dawn.
More than 370 people have been killed since the weekend in violent clashes in Syria’s southern Sweida province, a war monitor said Thursday, updating an earlier toll.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said that since clashes erupted on Sunday, 79 Druze fighters were killed along with 55 civilians, 27 of them in “summary executions by members of the defence and interior ministries”, while 189 defence and interior ministry personnel and 18 Bedouin fighters were also killed.
“The city of Sweida seems devoid of any government forces presence,” the editor in chief of the Suwayda 24 news website, Rayan Maarouf, told AFP.
Government forces had deployed to the city on Tuesday with the stated aim of overseeing a truce, following days of deadly clashes between Druze fighters and Sunni Bedouin tribes.
But witnesses said government forces had instead joined the Bedouin in attacking Druze fighters and civilians.
Meanwhile Syria’s interim President Ahmed al-Sharaa vowed Thursday that those behind violence against the Druze minority would be held accountable after deadly clashes in their southern heartland, saying security responsibility would be returned to local authorities.
“We are keen on holding accountable those who transgressed and abused our Druze people, as they are under the protection and responsibility of the state,” Sharaa said in a televised address.
Neighbouring Israel responded with strikes on the Syrian military, including its headquarters in Damascus, which it warned would intensify until the Islamist-led government withdrew its forces from the south.
Israel, which is home to around 150,000 Druze citizens, has repeatedly stated its intention to defend the Druze of Syria in bouts of sectarian violence that have broken out since the Islamist now in power in Damascus toppled longtime leader Bashar al-Assad in December.
The Israeli military, which has taken control of the UN-monitored demilitarized zone on the Golan Heights and conducted hundreds of strikes on military targets in Syria, also says it will not allow any Syrian military presence on its border.
