Syrian government declares ‘comprehensive’ ceasefire in Sweida

The Syrian presidency has declared an “immediate and comprehensive” ceasefire in Sweida, saying internal security forces have been deployed in the southern province after almost a week of fighting in the predominantly Druze area which has killed more than 700 people.

Armed tribes had clashed with Druze fighters on Friday, a day after the army withdrew under Israeli bombardment and diplomatic pressure.

In a statement on Saturday, the Syrian presidency warned that any breaches of the ceasefire would be a “clear violation to sovereignty”, and urged all parties to commit to the ceasefire 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 tribe members and the opening of humanitarian corridors for besieged civilians to leave.

Hours earlier, the US envoy announced 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.

The UN had also called for an end to the “bloodshed” and demanded an independent investigation of the violence, which has killed at least 718 people from both sides since Sunday, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

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 told the Guardian over the phone.

The renewed fighting raised questions about the authority of the Syrian leader, Ahmed al-Sharaa, whose interim government faces misgivings from the country’s minorities after the slaughter 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 the US special envoy Thomas Barrack saying Syria should be centrally governed as “one country”.

When Israel targeted Syrian troops and Damascus on Wednesday, bombarding the Syrian defence ministry’s 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, and 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 both 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 sided with the Bedouin and committed many abuses against Druze civilians as well as fighters. The organisation reported that 19 civilians were killed in an “horrific massacre” when Syrian defence ministry forces and general security forces entered the town of Sahwat al-Balatah.

After the Israeli bombardment, a truce was negotiated on Wednesday, allowing Druze factions and clerics to maintain security in Sweida as government forces pulled out.

In a speech on Thursday, the Syrian president said Druze groups would be left to govern security affairs in the southern province, in what he described as a choice to avoid war.

Sharaa said: “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 … 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 Agence France-Presse 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, while communication lines have 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 Bashar al-Assad 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 added.

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.