The war monitoring team said Thursday that the death toll from sectarian violence in Syria exceeded 100 after the unrest spread to new areas.
The violence broke out in Jaramana City on Tuesday after the audio clips posted on social media were allegedly a pastor from the minority prophet Mohammed. The pastor denied the allegation, and Syria’s interior ministry said its initial discovery showed that he was not the one in the edit.
Nevertheless, armed Sunni Muslim extremist groups began to attack Jaramana, in the outskirts of the capital Damascus. The Drus militia effectively responded to protecting their communities, and the government sent its own troops to calm the unrest.
On Wednesday, the conflict spread to another town in Ashrafieh Sahnaya, the southern suburb of the capital. Earlier Thursday, violence spilled from the suburbs of Damascus to Sweida, a region controlled by Drus in southern Syria.
The bloodshed raised concerns that a country where religious minorities already feel very vulnerable, as the overthrow of Assad’s dictatorship in December will further rupture.
This is the second major outbreak of sectarian violence since the rebel coalition overthrew President Bashar al-Assad and seized power.
The alliance is led by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, an Islamic group once linked to Al Qaeda, which includes other Islamic armed groups with more extreme ideologies. Many of these groups have not yet been under control of the new government, and the new Syrian authorities have little ability to control them.
Syrian human rights observers, a British war monitor, said the death toll rose to 101 from three-day conflict by Thursday.
The Observatory first reported on Thursday that extremist militants killed 35 Druses on the road connecting Sweida to Damascus and five Druse fighters in a village in the Sweida area.
The observatory said those killed in Ashrafieh Sahnaya on Wednesday included the former mayor of Hassan Warwar and his son.
The Observatory said 20 government security forces were also killed during the unrest this week, with 10 Allied troops.
Druse practices a religion of Islamic branches, headquartered in Sweida well-organized militias who were reluctant to join the new government’s army.
Israel, which has close ties to Israeli Druss, also entered competition on Wednesday, launching air strikes on the characteristics of “agents” attacking Syrian Druss civilians.
Syria’s new Islamic leaders have been working to absorb the complex network of armed groups across the country to become a national military. In addition to the Drews militia, there are armed factions supporting the government, and activists and militants interviewed this week said there appeared to be a clash with Drews.
Svida’s Drus militia commander Abu Hassan, who was driven by Nom de Guerre, said thousands of fighters fought in several places between the Daraa in Sweida and Seoth Western cities on Wednesday. He said the Drus militants were fighting the Bedouin militants with the government and others.
Governors in the region, including Jaramana and Ashrafieh Sahnaya, Amr al-Sheikh, accused the “illegal groups” of starting the initial violence at a press conference on Wednesday, but the groups were not identified. Mr. Al-Sheikh did not acknowledge the existence of pro-government armed factions, saying only that official government forces have been deployed to protect the two towns.
However, other security officials privately acknowledged that the government had no control over all armed groups supporting it.
“We have the right to protect ourselves from these random factions,” said Sweida’s Druse activist Loubna Baset.
She added that the government “claimed that they were sending all these military reinforcements to protect us, but we didn’t trust them.”
Despite the sectarian fronts, the general security forces of the government included Druss and other ethnic minorities as well as fighters from the Sunni Muslim majority. Druse is one of the general security forces killed this week.
But despite the promise of inclusiveness by the government, Syrian minorities remain on the edge, an anxiety deepening the wave of sectarian killings that hit the coastal areas of Syria, which are home to the country’s Alaves, and the minority to which the Assad family belongs.
Reham Mourshed Contribution report.
