On Saturday, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio demanded from the Syrian government that it prevents the arrival of “violent jihadists” in the south of the country, the scene of deadly community clashes for a week.
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Syrian authorities must use “their security forces to prevent the Islamic State and other violent jihadists from entering the region and perpetrating massacres,” Rubio wrote in X.
The Islamic State group had taken control of large sides of the Syrian and Iraqi territories at the start of the civil war that broke out in 2011, proclaiming the creation of a cross -border “caliphate” in 2014.
Syrian Kurdish forces supported by the United States defeated him in 2019, but the jihadists maintained their presence, especially in the vast Syrian desert.
Government forces “must also ask for accounts and to court any person guilty of atrocities, including in their own ranks,” wrote the head of American diplomacy.
“Fighting between Druzes and Bedouin groups in the region must also stop immediately,” he demanded.
The violence between Druzes and Sunni Bedouins groups that broke out on July 13 in the Soueida region, in southern Syria, left 940 dead, according to the Syrian Observatory of Human Rights (OSDH), an organization established in London which is based on a large network of sources across the country.
Syrian power announced on Saturday a cease-fire in the province of Soueida and began to redeploy forces there to restore peace there, but AFP journalists have still observed fire, fire and looting during the day.
According to the OSDH, Druzes fighters have regained control of the city of Soueida, but fighting continues in the rest of the province.
