DAMASCUS (AP) — Druze spiritual leader Sheikh Hikmat Al-Hijri on Thursday harshly criticized Syria's government for what he called an “unjustified genocidal attack" on the minority community during deadly sectarian fighting in Druze-majority areas south of Damascus this week.
Syria’s Information Ministry said 11 members of the country’s security forces were killed in two separate attacks, while Britain-based war monitor The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said 56 people in Sahnaya and the Druze-majority Damascus suburb of Jaramana were killed in clashes, among them local gunmen and security forces.
The clashes broke out around midnight Monday after an audio clip circulated on social media of a man criticizing Islam’s Prophet Muhammad. The audio was attributed to a Druze cleric. But cleric Marwan Kiwan said in a video posted on social media that he was not responsible for the audio, which angered many Sunni Muslims.
On Wednesday, 15 Druze men were killed in a highway ambush as they were heading to support armed groups south of Damascus against pro-government gunmen. No group has immediately claimed responsibility for the attack on the convoy.
“This collective killing is systematic, clear, visible, and documented,” Al-Hijri's statement read. “We no longer trust a group that calls itself a government, because the government doesn’t kill its own people through extremist gangs that are loyal to it, and after the massacre claims they are loose forces.”
On Wednesday afternoon, the Syrian government said a deal was reached between Druze dignitaries and official representatives after which security forces and pro-government gunmen entered Sahnaya and Druze gunmen withdrew from the streets.
Videos on social media showed what appear to be pro-government militias beating Druze men they had captured in Sahnaya and making offensive sectarian remarks.
The Druze religious sect is a minority group that began as a 10th-century offshoot of Ismailism, a branch of Shiite Islam. More than half of the roughly 1 million Druze worldwide live in Syria. Most of the other Druze live in Lebanon and Israel, including in the Golan Heights, which Israel captured from Syria in the 1967 Mideast War and annexed in 1981. In Syria, they largely live in the southern Sweida province and some suburbs of Damascus.
Syria's leadership, former insurgents who toppled former President Bashar Assad in December, has promised to protect minority groups but they're led by Islamist Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, or HTS, which has had affiliations in the past with the Sunni Muslim extremist al-Qaida group and is viewed by the minorities with suspicion.
Most Druze spiritual leaders and factions have opted to air their grievances in closed communication with the new government, but concerns have heightened after a crackdown on Assad loyalists in Syria's coastal province turned into a series of targeted revenge attacks against the Alawite minority group. Videos widely circulated of houses burned down and bloodied bodies of Alawites on the streets. Tens of thousands of Alawites fled south to neighboring Lebanon and many are too scared to return.
The Druze have since become reluctant to lay down their arms, which they say they need for protection.
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Chehayeb reported from Beirut.
Ghaith Alsayed And Kareem Chehayeb, The Associated Press
