Syria: Israel Bombardes Damascus after abuses against druzes

Israel bombed the Syrian army headquarters in Damascus on Wednesday, after threatening to intensify its strikes against government forces if they did not leave the city in the majority of Soueida, after three days of violence that left nearly 250 people.

The clashes continued on Wednesday in this city in southern Syria, hitherto held by local Druzes fighters, where the forces of Syrian Islamist power and their allies were deployed on Tuesday with a clear desire to extend their authority.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (OSDH), Druze witnesses and groups accused them of numerous abuses, including summary executions of civilians and looting.

According to the NGO, 248 people have been killed since the start of the fighting on Sunday between Druzes and Bedouin tribes, which caused government forces alongside the latter.

Most killed are two -way fighters as well as 28 Druzes civilians, including “21 summarily executed” by members of government forces, according to the OSDH.

Israel, which occupies and annexed part of the Golan’s Syrian plateau, has repeated in recent days that it would not allow military presence in southern Syria, near their common border, and threatened to intensify its strikes carried out since Monday if the Syrian forces did not withdraw from this region.

The Israeli army “will increase the intensity of its responses against the regime if the message is not understood,” said Defense Minister Israel Katz, demanding Syrian power that he “leaves the Druzes de Soueida.

“Israel will not give up the Druzes in Syria and will impose the demilitarization policy” in the south of the country announced after the fall of the former Syrian-president Bashar al-Assad in December, said the minister.

Make its threats, the Israeli army announced on Wednesday that it had struck the entrance to the headquarters of the Syrian army in Damascus.

Syrian state television reported that two people had been injured in the center of the capital, without specifying the exact location of the facts.

The Israeli army has also announced to strengthen its troops on the Syrian border and says it has identified “dozens of suspects” who were trying to cross the border from Syria.

In Soueida, where the authorities proclaimed on Tuesday a ceasefire that was not respected, two AFP correspondents heard intermittent shooting on Wednesday and one of them saw smoke rising from several districts.

“I am in the heart of the city of Soueida, next to the governorate building (…) I do not think of going out and in any case there is no possibility of fleeing,” a resident joined by phone told AFP.

“If they arrive here, I died. Summary executions take place in the streets, “added this man who has not revealed his identity.

One of AFP’s correspondents saw around thirty bodies on Wednesday morning on the ground, some of members of the government forces and others of in civilian fighters, without being able to identify their belonging.

Another has seen government forces draw shells from one of their positions.

The local site Suwayda 24 reported “a violent bombardment at artillery and mortar” on the city and its surroundings since dawn.

The Syrian Ministry of Defense said that “outlaws have started to attack army and internal security forces in the city”, after the proclamation of the ceasefire.

“The army continues to respond to sources of fire in the city,” added the ministry, quoted by the official Sana agency, calling on the inhabitants to stay at home.

On Wednesday, one of the most influential Druzes religious leaders, Cheikh Hikmat al-Hejri, launched an appeal to the American president Donald Trump, to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu “and to all those who have an influence in the world”.

“Save Soueida,” he said, adding, “Our people are exterminated and killed with coolness”. The main Druzes religious leaders have divergent positions and Cheikh Hejri stood out on Tuesday by calling the combatants of this minority not to lay down their arms.

The province of Soueida houses the most important Druze community in the country, an esoteric minority from Islam which had some 700,000 members in Syria before the civil war, and is also located in Lebanon and Israel.

These violence illustrates the challenges faced by the interim power of Ahmad al-Chareh since he overthrew, with a coalition of Sunni rebel groups, President Bashar al-Assad in December, in a country bruised by almost 14 years of civil war.

The spokesman for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs announced on Thursday of France’s “lively concern” about the clashes that left nearly 250 dead in three days in Syria, condemning “the abuses that aim for civilians”.

Paris “calls for the immediate cessation of clashes and invites all the actors to do everything to guarantee the security of civilians, restore calm and promote peace between all the components of Syrian society, especially between the Druze and the other communities of Soueida,” he said.