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Violence in Syria’s Sweida province has claimed over 1,000 lives amid clashes between Druze fighters, Bedouin rivals, government forces, armed tribes, and Israel.
Tribal and bedouin fighters gather in the western neighbourhood of southern Syria’s predominantly Druze city of Sweida, amid clashes with Druze gunmen on July 19, 2025. (AFP)
Violence in southern Syria has claimed over 1,000 lives, according to a Syria monitor, amid clashes between Druze fighters and their Bedouin rivals, as well as government forces, armed tribes and Israel.
According to a monitor and AFP correspondents, calm appeared to have returned to southern Syria’s Sweida province on Sunday, after a week of sectarian violence between Druze fighters and rival groups left hundreds dead.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said that since around midnight, “Sweida has been experiencing a cautious calm”, adding government security forces had blocked roads leading to the province to prevent tribal fighters from heading there.
It added that those killed since last Sunday included 336 Druze fighters and 298 civilians from the religious minority group, 194 of whom were “summarily executed by defence and interior ministry personnel”.
The dead also included 342 government security personnel and 21 Sunni Bedouin, three of them civilians, “summarily executed by Druze fighters”. Another 15 government forces were killed in Israeli strikes, the Observatory said.
AFP correspondents near Sweida city reported an eerie calm, with no sounds of fighting, as humanitarian convoys prepared to enter the predominantly Druze town of Sweida.
Interim President Ahmed al-Sharaa had on Saturday announced a fresh ceasefire in Sweida and renewed a pledge to protect Syria’s ethnic and religious minorities in the face of the latest sectarian violence since Islamists overthrew longtime ruler Bashar al-Assad in December.
Residents of the city, numbering around 150,000, have been sheltering at home without access to electricity, water, or adequate food supplies.
US special envoy to Syria Tom Barrack said Sunday that the country stood at a “critical juncture”, adding that “peace and dialogue must prevail — and prevail now”.
“All factions must immediately lay down their arms, cease hostilities, and abandon cycles of tribal vengeance,” he wrote on X, saying “brutal acts by warring factions on the ground undermine the government’s authority and disrupt any semblance of order”.
The announcement by Sharaa on Saturday followed a statement by the United States just hours earlier, claiming to have brokered a ceasefire between Syria’s government and Israel. This came after Israeli airstrikes targeted government forces in Sweida and Damascus earlier in the week.
Israel, which has its own Druze community, has said it was acting in defence of the group, as well as to enforce its demands for the total demilitarisation of Syria’s south.
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