Bedouin fighters and their allies have continued to clash with Druze fighters in the Syrian province of Sweida, despite an order by the government to put down their arms in a conflict that has killed more than 900 people since Sunday.
The Syrian presidency had earlier declared an “immediate and comprehensive” ceasefire and deployed its internal security forces in the southern province after almost a week of fighting in the predominantly Druze area.
Armed tribes had clashed with Druze fighters on Friday, a day after the army withdrew under Israeli bombardment and diplomatic pressure.
On Saturday, in his second televised address since the fighting started, the Syrian leader, Ahmed al-Sharaa, blamed “armed groups from Sweida” for reigniting the conflict by “launching retaliatory attacks against the Bedouins and their families”. He also said Israeli intervention “pushed the country into a dangerous phase”.
Late on Saturday, the interior ministry said clashes in Sweida city had been halted and the area cleared of Bedouin tribal fighters following the deployment.
The presidency added in a statement that any breaches of the ceasefire would be a “clear violation to sovereignty”, and urged all parties to “fully commit” to it and end hostilities in all areas immediately.
Syria’s internal security forces had begun deploying in Sweida “with the aim of protecting civilians and putting an end to the chaos”, the interior ministry spokesperson Noureddine al-Baba said in a statement on Telegram.
A statement on Saturday by one of the three religious leaders of the Syrian Druze community, Sheikh Hikmat al-Hijri, said the ceasefire would guarantee safe exit for community members and the opening of humanitarian corridors for besieged civilians to leave.
Correspondents with Agence France-Presse, however, reported clashes in the west of the provincial capital as Druze fighters battled armed Bedouin supported by tribal gunmen from other parts of Syria. The Druze fighters said those who had arrived to support the Bedouin were mostly Islamists.
One armed tribesman, who identified himself only as Abu Jassem, told AFP that “we will slaughter them [the Druze] in their homes”.
France’s foreign ministry urged all sides to respect the ceasefire. “France welcomes the announcement of a ceasefire in the Sweida region. It urges all parties to strictly adhere to it,” the ministry said. “Fighting and violence must cease immediately.”
The US special envoy, Thomas Barrack, had announced early on Saturday morning that Israel and Syria had agreed to a ceasefire, after Israel sided with the Druze factions and joined the conflict, including by bombing a government building in Damascus.
Barrack, who is the US ambassador to Ankara, said the deal had the backing of Turkey, a key supporter of Sharaa, as well as neighbouring Jordan.
“We call upon Druze, Bedouins and Sunnis to put down their weapons and together with other minorities build a new and united Syrian identity in peace and prosperity with its neighbours,” he wrote on X.
The US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, later on Saturday called on the Syrian government’s security forces to prevent jihadists from entering and “carrying out massacres” in the conflict-stricken south. US-brokered negotiations sought to avert further Israeli military intervention.
“The US has remained heavily involved over the last three days with Israel, Jordan and authorities in Damascus on the horrifying and dangerous developments in southern Syria,” Rubio said.
He called for the Syrian government to “hold accountable and bring to justice anyone guilty of atrocities including those in their own ranks”.
“Furthermore the fighting between Druze and Bedouin groups inside the perimeter must also stop immediately,” Rubio added.
Sharaa followed up on the US announcement by renewing his pledge to protect Syria’s ethnic and religious minorities.
“The Syrian state is committed to protecting all minorities and communities in the country … We condemn all crimes committed” in Sweida, he said in his televised speech.
He also paid tribute to the “important role played by the United States, which again showed its support for Syria in these difficult circumstances and its concern for the country’s stability”.
The EU welcomed the deal between Syria and Israel, saying it had been appalled by the deadly sectarian violence of recent days.
But Israel expressed deep scepticism about Sharaa’s renewed pledge to protect minorities, pointing to deadly violence against Alawites as well as Druze since he led the overthrow of the country’s longtime leader Bashar al-Assad in December.
In Sharaa’s Syria “it is very dangerous to be a member of a minority – Kurd, Druze, Alawite or Christian”, the Israeli foreign minister, Gideon Saar, posted on X.
The UN had previously called for an end to the fighting and demanded an independent investigation of the violence, which has killed at least 940 people from both sides since Sunday, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR).
The SOHR reported on Friday that the humanitarian situation in Sweida had “dramatically deteriorated” owing to an acute shortage of food and medical supplies. All hospitals were out of service because of the conflict and looting was widespread in the city.
“The situation in the hospital is disastrous. The corpses have begun to rot, there’s a huge amount of bodies, among them women and children,” a surgeon at Sweida national hospital said over the phone.
The renewed fighting raised questions about the authority of Sharaa, whose interim government faces misgivings from the country’s minorities after the killing of 1,500 mostly Alawite civilians on the Syrian coast in March.
It was Sharaa who ordered government forces to pull out of Sweida, saying that mediation by the US and others had helped to avert a “large-scale escalation” with Israel.
A number of sources told Reuters that Sharaa had initially misread how Israel would respond to him deploying troops to the country’s south earlier this week, having been encouraged by Barrack saying Syria should be centrally governed as one country.
When Israel targeted Syrian troops and Damascus on Wednesday, bombarding the Syrian defence ministry headquarters in the centre of the capital and striking near the presidential palace, it took the Syrian government by surprise, the sources said.
Druze people are seen as a loyal minority within Israel and often serve in its military. An Israeli military spokesperson said the strikes were a message to Syria’s president regarding the events in Sweida.
But the Syrian government mistakenly believed it had a green light from the US and Israel to dispatch its forces south despite months of Israeli warnings not to do so, according to the Reuters sources, which included Syrian political and military officials, two diplomats and regional security sources.
The violence erupted last Sunday after the kidnapping of a Druze vegetable merchant by local Bedouin triggered tit-for-tat abductions, the SOHR said.
The government sent in the army, promising to put a halt to the fighting, but witnesses and the SOHR said the troops had sided with the Bedouin and committed many abuses against Druze civilians as well as fighters. The organisation reported that 19 civilians had been killed in an “horrific massacre” when Syrian defence ministry forces and general security forces entered the town of Sahwat al-Balatah.
A truce was negotiated on Wednesday after the Israeli bombardment, allowing Druze factions and clerics to maintain security in Sweida as government forces pulled out.
Sharaa said in a speech on Thursday that Druze groups would be left to govern security affairs in the southern province in what he described as a choice to avoid war.
“We sought to avoid dragging the country into a new, broader war that could derail it from its path to recovery from the devastating war,” he said. “We chose the interests of Syrians over chaos and destruction.”
But clashes resumed on Thursday as Syrian state media reported that Druze groups had launched revenge attacks on Bedouin villages. Bedouin tribes had fought alongside government forces against Druze fighters earlier in the week.
On Friday, about 200 tribal fighters clashed with armed Druze men from Sweida using machine guns and shells, an AFP correspondent said, while the SOHR reported fighting and “shelling on neighbourhoods in Sweida city”.
Sweida has been heavily damaged in the fighting and its mainly Druze inhabitants have been deprived of water and electricity. Communication lines have also been cut.
Rayan Maarouf, the editor-in-chief of the local news outlet Suwayda 24, said the humanitarian situation was “catastrophic”. “We cannot find milk for children,” he told AFP.
The UN high commissioner for human rights, Volker Türk, has demanded “independent, prompt and transparent investigations into all violations” adding that “those responsible must be held to account”.
The International Committee for the Red Cross said “health facilities are overwhelmed, medical supplies are dwindling and power cuts are impeding the preservation of human remains in overflowing morgues”.
“The humanitarian situation in Sweida is critical. People are running out of everything,” said Stephan Sakalian, the head of ICRC’s delegation in Syria.
Syria’s minority groups have been given what many see as only token representation in the interim government since the former president fled the country, according to Bassam Alahmad, the executive director of Syrians for Truth and Justice, a civil society organisation.
“It’s a transitional period. We should have a dialogue, and they [the minorities] should feel that they’re a real part of the state,” Alahmad said. Instead, the incursion into Sweida sent a message that the new authorities would use military force to “control every part of Syria”.
“Bashar Assad tried this way” and failed, he said.
Government supporters, however, fear its decision to withdraw could signal to other minorities that it is acceptable to demand their own autonomous regions, which they say would fragment and weaken the country.
If Damascus ceded security control of Sweida to the Druze, “of course everyone else is going to demand the same thing”, said Abdel Hakim al-Masri, a former official in the Turkish-backed regional government in north-west Syria before Assad’s fall.
“This is what we are afraid of,” he told the Associated Press.