Survivors describe gruesome killings by Syrian troops, deepening distrust and raising fears for minority groups after days of intense fighting

One elderly man had been shot in the head in his living room. Another in his bedroom. The body of a woman lay in the street. After days of bloodshed in Syria’s Druze city of Sweida, survivors emerged on Thursday to collect and bury the scores of dead found across the city.

A ceasefire overnight brought an end to ferocious fighting between Druze militia and government forces sent to the city to quell clashes between Druze and Bedouin fighters.

The violence worsened sharply after the arrival of government forces, according to accounts to Reuters by a dozen residents of Sweida, two reporters on the ground and a monitoring group.

Residents described friends and neighbours being shot at close range in their homes or in the streets. They said the killings were carried out by Syrian troops, identified by their fatigues and the insignia on them.

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A health worker fills out a list of victims of the recent clashes. Photo: AFP

Reuters was able to verify the time and location of some videos showing dead bodies, but could not independently verify who conducted the killings or when they occurred.

In a video statement early on Thursday, Syrian leader Ahmed al-Sharaa said that protecting the rights of Druze was among his priorities and blamed “outlaw groups” seeking to inflame tensions for any crimes against civilians.

He vowed to hold accountable those responsible for violations against the Druze, but did not say whether government forces were responsible.

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The government’s earlier statement on a ceasefire for the region said a fact-finding mission would investigate the “crimes, violations and breaches that happened, determine who was responsible and compensate those affected … as quickly as possible”.

The residents of Sweida who Reuters spoke to said the bloodshed had deepened their distrust of the Islamist-led government in Damascus and their worries about how Sharaa would ensure that Syria’s minority groups were protected.

In sectarian violence in Syria’s coastal region in March, hundreds of people from the Alawite minority were killed by forces aligned to Sharaa.

Damage to a building in Sweida. Photo: AFP

“I can’t keep up with the calls coming in now about the dead,” said Kenan Azzam, a dentist who lives on the eastern outskirts of Sweida and spoke to Reuters by phone.

He said he had just learned of the killing of a friend, agricultural engineer Anis Nasser, who he said had been taken from his home by government forces this week.

“Today, they found his dead body in a pile of bodies in Sweida city,” Azzam said.

Another Sweida resident, who asked to be identified only as Amer out of fear of reprisals, shared a video that he said depicted his slain neighbours in their home.

The video, which Reuters was not able to independently verify, showed the body of one man in a chair. On the floor were an elderly man with a gunshot wound to his right temple and a younger man, face down, in a pool of blood.

Like the other cases of descriptions of killings in the city, Reuters could not verify who was responsible.

A Syrian Druze fighter clears an area after the withdrawal of government troops. Photo: AFP

Spokespeople for the interior and defence ministries did not immediately respond to questions from Reuters on whether government forces were responsible for the killings in the homes and streets.

The Syrian Network for Human Rights, a rights monitor that documented violations throughout the civil war and has continued its work, said it had verified 254 people killed in Sweida, including medical personnel, women and children.

Its head, Fadel Abdulghany, said the figure included field executions by both sides, Syrians killed by Israeli strikes and others killed in clashes, but that it would take time to break down figures for each category.

Abdulghany said the Network had also documented cases of extrajudicial killings by Druze militias of government forces.

The government did not give a death toll for its troops or for civilians killed in Sweida.

The health ministry said dozens of dead government forces and civilians were found in the city’s main hospital, but did not give further details.

A Syrian forces fighter fires a shoulder-launched weapon amid clashes in Sweida city on Tuesday. Photo: AFP

Syria’s Druze follow a religion derived from Islam and is part of a minority that also has members in Lebanon, Israel, and the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights.

Ultraconservative Sunni groups including Islamic State consider the Druze as heretics and attacked them throughout Syria’s conflict, which erupted in 2011.

Druze militias fought back, and Sweida was largely spared the violence that engulfed Syria. The 14-year war ended with the ousting of President Bashar al-Assad last December.

When Sharaa’s forces began fighting their way from northwest Syria to Damascus last year, many minorities feared the rebels and were heartened when fighters passed their towns and went straight to the capital.

A reporter in Sweida who asked not to be identified said he witnessed government forces shoot four people at close range, including a woman and teenage boys.

He said bodies littered the streets.

A destroyed monument in Sweida. Photo: AFP

One of them, a woman, lay face up on the pavement with an apparent stab wound to the stomach, he said.

One resident, who asked to remain anonymous, showed the reporter the body of his slain brother in a bedroom of their home on Tuesday. He had been shot in the head.

A video verified by Reuters showed two bodies on a commercial street in central Sweida. Another showed bodies, several with gunshot wounds to the chest, in the Al-Radwan guest house in Sweida.

Ryan Maarouf of local media outlet Suwayda24 told Reuters on Thursday he had found a family of 12 killed in one house, including naked women, an elderly man and two young girls.

It was not possible to verify who killed the people in these cases.

The reporter said he heard government forces yell “pigs” and “infidels” at Druze residents.

The reporter said troops looted refrigerators and solar panels from homes and also burned homes and alcohol shops, including after the ceasefire was announced on Wednesday.

Some of the residents interviewed by Reuters said government forces used razors, scissors and electric shavers to shave off the moustaches of Druze men – a humiliating act.

Spokespeople for the interior and defence ministries did not immediately respond to questions on troops looting, burning homes, or using sectarian language and shaving moustaches.

As the violence unfolded, Israel’s military began strikes on government convoys in Sweida and the defence ministry and near the presidential palace in Damascus.

US intervention helped end the fighting. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said “historic longtime rivalries” between Druze and Bedouin communities had “led to an unfortunate situation and a misunderstanding, it looks like, between the Israeli side and the Syrian side”.

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Syrian Druze fighters celebrating on top of a damaged army vehicle, after Syrian forces withdrew from Sweida, on July 17.

– Residents emerged from their homes to scenes of devastation on July 17 after government forces withdrew from the Syrian Druze-majority city of Sweida, leaving behind looted shops, burned homes and bodies littering the streets after days of violence.

“What I saw of the city looked as if it had just emerged from a flood or a natural disaster,” 39-year-old Hanadi Obeid, a doctor, told AFP.

What started as deadly clashes between local Druze fighters and Bedouin tribes on July 13 quickly escalated after government forces were deployed to the province the following day.

After reaching an agreement with Sweida’s community leaders, Syrian troops withdrew from the city overnight on July 16, following what witnesses described as a violent rampage.

“Three bodies were lying in the street, one of them an elderly woman,” Dr Obeid said, adding that she saw “burned cars everywhere, others upside down, and a charred tank”.

Many residents had holed up in their homes as they waited for the fighting to end.

On July 17, Sweida’s typically bustling streets and markets were still largely quiet, with Dr Obeid saying a foul odour emanated from the area as stray dogs roamed around.

As a doctor, she has seen “many corpses and dead bodies, but death has had a different taste in recent days, and I’ve felt it closer to me than ever before”.

Dr Obeid, who has a young daughter, said she feared what awaited her when she returned to work at the city’s main hospital.

More than 500 people from all sides were killed in the violence, according to the Britain-based war monitor the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

‘Humanitarian catastrophe’

An AFP photographer reported chaos outside the central hospital, with dozens of bodies brought there since the morning of July 17 after being collected from homes and streets. The photographer counted 15 bodies in the city centre.

Grief-stricken families were seen arriving at the hospital searching for their loved ones.

Local media outlet Suwayda 24 reported that the central hospital was put out of service on July 16 after government forces entered it and clashed with Druze fighters.

A video that circulated on July 16 showed bodies piled up in the morgue, with the refrigerated storage units for remains reaching capacity.

Other videos showed wounded people in the corridors, some on beds and others lying on the floor, and medical staff unable to respond to emergency cases.

A vehicle burning in a street after Syrian government forces pulled out of Sweida, on July 17. PHOTO: AFP

Mr Rayan Maarouf, editor-in-chief of Suwayda 24, told AFP that more than 150 bodies had been counted at the hospital, which was no longer able to receive corpses.

“The dialysis machines are out of service, and patients are not receiving treatment. There is a humanitarian catastrophe in Sweida,” he said.

Water and electricity services remained cut off in the city, and most shops have closed their doors pending the completion of search operations by local fighters securing the area.

The AFP photographer saw damaged storefronts, their glass shattered in the streets, and others looted. A woman was inspecting her shop, the only one around that had been burned.

Government forces were accused by witnesses, Druze factions and the Observatory of siding with Bedouin tribes and committing abuses, including summary executions.

A Syrian Druze woman, who crossed to the village Majdal Shams in the Israel-annexed Golan Heights the day before, waving as she makes her way back to neighbouring Syria, on July 17. PHOTO: AFP

As government forces withdrew on July 17, an AFP correspondent in Sweida province saw Bedouin families dismantling their tents before leaving the area, fearing reprisals.

“We have been at war for four days. We want to survive,” said Ms Wadha al-Awad, 58, accompanied by her family.

“We fled and are heading west with our children to Daraa,” she added.

“This is our destiny. We are afraid, and all we want is peace.” AFP

In the last barely-functional hospital in Sweida, bodies are overflowing from the morgue, staff said, amid violence that has wracked the Druze-majority southern Syrian city for nearly a week.

“It’s not a hospital anymore, it’s a mass grave,” said Rouba, a member of the medical staff at the city’s sole government hospital, weeping as she appealed for aid.

Dr Omar Obeid, who heads the Sweida division at Syria’s Order of Physicians, said the facility has received “more than 400 bodies since Monday morning”, including women, children and the elderly.

“There’s no more space in the morgue, the bodies are out on the street” in front of the hospital, he continued.

Fighting erupted Sunday night between Druze fighters and local Bedouin tribes before Syrian government forces intervened on Tuesday with the stated intention of quelling the violence.

But in the subsequent events, those government forces were accused of grave abuses against the minority, according to rights organisations, witnesses and Druze groups.

The government forces withdrew from the city on Thursday following threats from Israel, which has vowed to protect the Druze.

In the hospital on Friday, corridors were engulfed by the stench of the dead bodies, which had bloated beyond recognition, an AFP correspondent said.

Visibly overwhelmed, the handful of medical personnel remaining at the facility nonetheless rushed to do their best to offer care to the seemingly endless stream of wounded, many of them waiting in the hallways.

“There are only nine doctors and medical staff left, and they are working nonstop,” said Rouba, who preferred not to give her full name.

– ‘No water, no electricity’ –

“The situation is very bad, we have no water and no electricity, medicines are starting to run out,” Rouba continued.

“There are people who have been at home for three days and we can’t manage to rescue them,” she said.

“The bodies are on the streets and no one can go out to get them. Yesterday, five big cars filled with bodies arrived at the hospital.

“There are women, children, people whose identities are unknown, cut-off arms or legs.”

The United Nations on Friday urged an end to the bloodshed, demanding “independent, prompt and transparent investigations into all violations”.

According to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, the violence has claimed the lives of nearly 600 people since Sunday.

Omar Obeid told AFP that three of his colleagues were killed, including one who was “shot dead in his house, in front of his family”.

Another was killed at point-blank range in her car as she drove through a security checkpoint, he said.

The third, “surgeon Talaat Amer was killed while he was at the hospital on Tuesday in a blue surgical gown to perform his duty”, Obeid said.

“They shot him in the head. Then they called his wife and told her: your husband was wearing a surgical cap — it’s red now.”

Members of Syrian security forces walk on a road in Sweida countryside, as vehicles transporting other Syrian security forces make their way out of the predominantly Druze city of Sweida, Syria, July 16, 2025. REUTERS/Karam al-Masri/File Photo Purchase Licensing Rights , opens new tab

Summary Syria’s Sweida province rocked by days of violence

Over 300 killed in fighting, human rights group says

Syrian forces to get limited access to Sweida province

Residents report clashes in province’s north and west

BEIRUT/JERUSALEM, July 18 (Reuters) – Israel has agreed to allow limited access by Syrian forces into the Sweida area of southern Syria for the next two days, an Israeli official said on Friday, after days of bloodshed in the predominantly Druze area that has killed over 300 people.

Sweida province has been engulfed by nearly a week of violence triggered by clashes between Bedouin fighters and factions from the Druze, a minority with followers in Syria, Lebanon and Israel.

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The Syrian presidency said late on Friday that authorities would deploy a force in the south dedicated to ending the clashes, in coordination with political and security measures to restore stability and prevent the return of violence.

Damascus earlier this week dispatched government troops to quell the fighting, but they were accused of carrying out widespread violations against the Druze and were hit by Israeli strikes before withdrawing under a truce agreed on Wednesday.

Israel had repeatedly said it would not allow Syrian troops to deploy to the country’s south, but on Friday it said it would grant them a brief window to end renewed clashes there.

“In light of the ongoing instability in southwest Syria, Israel has agreed to allow limited entry of the (Syrian) internal security forces into Sweida district for the next 48 hours,” the official, who declined to be named, told reporters.

Describing Syria’s new rulers as barely disguised jihadists, Israel has vowed to shield the area’s Druze community from attack, encouraged by calls from Israel’s own Druze minority.

It carried out new strikes on Sweida province overnight.

Reuters reporters saw a convoy of units from Syria’s interior ministry stopped on a road in Daraa province, which lies directly east of Sweida. A security source told Reuters that forces were awaiting a final green light to enter Sweida.

But thousands of Bedouin fighters were still streaming into Sweida on Friday, the Reuters reporters said, prompting fears among residents that violence would continue unabated.

The Syrian Network for Human Rights said it had documented 321 deaths in fighting since Sunday, among them medical personnel, women and children. It said they included field executions by all sides.

Syria’s minister for emergencies said more than 500 wounded had been treated and hundreds of families had been evacuated out of the city.

‘NOTHING AT ALL’

Clashes continued in the north and west of Sweida province, according to residents and Ryan Marouf, the head of local news outlet Sweida24.

Residents said they had little food and water, and that electricity had been cut to the city for several days.

“For four days, there has been no electricity, no fuel, no food, no drink, nothing at all,” said Mudar, a 28-year-old resident of Sweida who asked to be identified only by his first name out of fear of reprisals.

“The clashes haven’t stopped,” he said, adding that “we can’t get news easily because there’s barely internet or phone coverage.”

The head of the U.N. human rights office urged Syria’s interim authorities to ensure accountability for what it said are credible reports of widespread rights violations during the fighting, including summary executions and kidnappings, the office said in a statement.

At least 13 people were unlawfully killed in one recorded incident on Tuesday when affiliates of the interim authorities opened fire at a family gathering, the OHCHR said. Six men were summarily executed near their homes the same day.

The UN refugee agency on Friday urged all sides to allow humanitarian access , which it said had been curtailed by the violence.

Israel’s deep distrust of Syria’s new Islamist-led leadership appears to be at odds with the United States, which said it did not support the recent Israeli strikes on Syria.

The U.S. intervened to help secure the earlier truce between government forces and Druze fighters, and the White House said on Thursday that it appeared to be holding.

Syrian leader Ahmed al-Sharaa, who has worked to establish warmer ties with the U.S., accused Israel of trying to fracture Syria and promised to protect its Druze minority.

Reporting by Maya Gebeily in Beirut, Crispian Balmer in Jerusalem, Olivia Le Poidevin in Geneva and Ahmed Tolba and Enas Alashray in Cairo; Writing by Andrew Mills and Nayera Abdallah; Editing by Barbara Lewis, Rachna Uppal, Timothy Heritage and Cynthia Osterman

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Members of Syria’s Druze community are searching for loved ones and counting their dead after days of clashes in a southern province that left bloodied bodies of civilians on the streets and homes looted

Syria’s Druze find bodies in the streets while searching for loved ones after clashes

Druze woman, Evelyn Azzam, 20, shows a picture of her husband who was wounded in clashes between Syrian government forces and Druze militias in Sweida, during an interview with The Associated Press in the southern Damascus suburb of Jaramana, Wednesday, July 16, 2025. (AP Photo/Abdulrahman Shaheen)

Druze woman, Evelyn Azzam, 20, shows a picture of her husband who was wounded in clashes between Syrian government forces and Druze militias in Sweida, during an interview with The Associated Press in the southern Damascus suburb of Jaramana, Wednesday, July 16, 2025. (AP Photo/Abdulrahman Shaheen)

Druze woman, Evelyn Azzam, 20, shows a picture of her husband who was wounded in clashes between Syrian government forces and Druze militias in Sweida, during an interview with The Associated Press in the southern Damascus suburb of Jaramana, Wednesday, July 16, 2025. (AP Photo/Abdulrahman Shaheen)

Druze woman, Evelyn Azzam, 20, shows a picture of her husband who was wounded in clashes between Syrian government forces and Druze militias in Sweida, during an interview with The Associated Press in the southern Damascus suburb of Jaramana, Wednesday, July 16, 2025. (AP Photo/Abdulrahman Shaheen)

JARAMANA, Syria — A Syrian Druze woman living in the United Arab Emirates frantically tried to keep in touch with her family in her hometown in southern Syria as clashes raged there over the past days.

Her mother, father and sister sent videos of their neighbors fleeing as fighters moved in. The explosions from shelling were non-stop, hitting near their house. Her family took shelter in the basement. When she reached them later in a video call, they said her father was missing. He had gone out during a lull to check the situation and never returned.

“Now I only pray. That’s all I can do,” she told The Associated Press at the time.

Hours later, they learned he had been shot and killed by a sniper. The woman spoke on condition of anonymity fearing that using her name would put her surviving family and friends at risk.

A ceasefire went into effect late Wednesday, easing days of brutal clashes in Sweida. Now, members of its Druze community who fled or went into hiding are returning to search for loved ones and count their losses. They are finding homes looted and bloodied bodies of civilians in the streets.

The fighting began with tit-for-tat kidnappings and attacks between local Sunni Bedouin tribes and Druze militias in the majority-Druze Sweida province. Government forces that intervened to restore order clashed with the Druze militias, but also in some cases attacked civilians.

At least 600 people — combatants and civilians on both sides — were killed in four days of clashes, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based war monitor. It said the dead included more than 80 civilians, mostly Druze, who were rounded up by fighters and collectively shot to death in what the monitor called “field executions.”

“These are not individual acts but systemic,” the Observatory’s director Rami Abdul-Rahman told the AP. “All the violations are there. You can see from the bodies that are all over the streets in Sweida clearly show they’re shot in the head.”

In response, Druze militias have targeted Bedouin families in revenge attacks since the ceasefire was reached. Footage shared on Syrian state media shows Bedouin families putting their belongings in trucks and fleeing with reports of renewed skirmishes in those areas. There was no word on casualties in those attacks.

Most of the Syrian Druze who spoke to the AP requested anonymity, fearing they and their families could be targeted.

The Druze religious sect is an offshoot of Ismailism, a branch of Shiite Islam. More than half of the roughly 1 million Druze worldwide live in Syria. The others live in Lebanon and Israel, including in the Golan Heights, which Israel captured from Syria in the 1967 Mideast War and annexed in 1981.

They largely celebrated the downfall in December of Syrian autocrat Bashar Assad but were divided over interim President Ahmad al-Sharaa’s Sunni Islamist rule. The latest violence has left the community more skeptical of Syria’s new leadership and doubtful of peaceful coexistence.

One Syrian-American Druze told the AP of his fear as he watched the clashes from the United States and tried to account for his family and friends whom he had seen in a recent trip to his native city Sweida.

Despite internet and communications breakdowns, he tracked down his family. His mother and brother fled because their home was shelled and raided, he said. Their belongings were stole, windows shattered. Their neighbors’ house was burned down. Two other neighbors were killed, one by shelling, another by stray bullets, he said.

He also pored over online videos of the fighting, finding a harrowing footage.

It showed gunmen in military uniform forcing a number of men in civilian clothes to kneel in the street in a well-known roundabout in Sweida. The gunmen then spray the men with automatic fire, their bodies dropping to the ground. The footage was seen by the AP.

To his horror, he recognized the men. One was a close family friend — another Syrian American on a visit to Sweida from the U.S. The others were the friend’s brother, father, three uncles and a cousin. Friends he reached told him that government forces had raided the house where they were all staying and took them outside and shot them.

“We affirm that protecting your rights and freedoms is among our top priorities,” al-Sharaa said in a speech broadcast Thursday, where he addressed the Druze people in Syria, promising to hold perpetrators of civilian killings to account.

But some rights groups accused Syria’s interim government of systematic sectarian violence, similar to that inflicted on the Alawite religious minority in the coastal province of Latakia in the aftermath of Assad’s fall as the new government tried to quell a counterinsurgency there.

Footage widely circulated on social media showed some of the carnage. One video shows a living room with several bodies on the floor and bullet holes in the walls and sofa.

In another, there are at least nine bloodied bodies in one room of the home of a family that took in people fleeing the fighting. Portraits of Druze notables are visible, smashed on the floor.

Evelyn Azzam, a Druze woman, is searching the Damascus suburb of Jaramana, trying to find out what happened to her husband, Robert Kiwan.

Last week, the 23-year-old Kiwan left home in Jaramana early as he does every day to commute to his job in Sweida.

He got caught up in the chaos when the clashes erupted. Azzam was on the phone with him as government forces questioned him and his coworkers. She heard a gunshot when one of the coworkers raised his voice. She heard her husband trying to appeal to the soldiers.

“He was telling them that they are from the Druze of Sweida, but have nothing to do with the armed groups,” the 20-year-old Azzam said.

Then she heard another gunshot; her husband was shot in the hip. An ambulance took him to a hospital, where she later learned he underwent an operation. But she hasn’t heard anything since and doesn’t know if he survived.

Back in the U.S., the Syrian-American said he was relieved that his family is safe but the video of his friend’s family being gunned down in the street filled him with “disbelief, betrayal, rage.”

He said his family and friends protested against Assad, celebrated his downfall and wanted to give al-Sharaa’s rule a chance. He said he hadn’t wanted to believe that the new Syrian army — which emerged from al-Sharaa’s insurgent forces — was made up of Islamic militants.

But after the violence in Latakia and now in Sweida, he sees the new army as a “bunch of militias … with a huge majority being radicals.”

“I can’t imagine a world where I would be able to go back and integrate with these monsters,” he said.

___

Chehayeb reported from Beirut.