US envoy to Syria Tom Barrack on Saturday urged restraint in the south’s Druze-majority Sweida province after a prominent figure quit the region following tensions with supporters of a pro-Israeli Druze leader.
This week, state media said clashes with local armed groups in the province left 10 government security personnel wounded, in unrest that came after two civilians were killed in similar clashes west of Sweida city. Tensions have been high in the province since clashes between Druze and government-aligned forces in July last year led to some of the worst communal violence since the fall of longtime Syrian ruler Bashar al-Assad in 2024. Sweida city and other parts of the province are under the control of local armed groups. They are the last major areas outside the power of Syria’s new authorities, who are seeking to extend their rule across the entire country. Tensions have risen in Sweida recently. Israel, which also has a Druze population, intervened militarily with strikes, saying it was defending the minority community. Israel’s ally Washington has drawn close to Syria’s new Islamist authorities. bur-lg/jj This article was generated from an automated news agency feed without modifications to text.
Among those groups is the so-called National Guard, which is affiliated with Druze leader Hikmat al-Hijri, a vocal critic of the new authorities who recently said his community was “an integral part of the state of Israel”. Syrian state television said on Friday that “outlaw groups” in Sweida had forced prominent local figure Atef Hunaidi to leave “after he was kidnapped… from his home due to a statement he released condemning Hijri’s remarks”. It said Hunaidi had later arrived in Damascus. Barrack said that “where governance is absent, gangs fill the void, and today a very few with toxic motives are turning on their own”. “Men such as Atef Hunaidi, arbitrarily detained and driven from his home,” Barrack said. His said his team was in contact with Hunaidi “and with others caught in this campaign of intracommunal violence” and urged “restraint in action, and communication in earnest” in the statement, which did not name Hijri. Barrack said a “roadmap for peace” in Sweida signed last year was “a path to the dignified reintegration of the province into Syria, with the full rights and the full obligations of citizenship for its Druze community”. It was, he added, “the only one that leads anywhere but back to grief”. Hirji’s National Guard said Friday that its fighters had “moved to contain the situation” after tensions spiked and people gathered outside Hunaidi’s home “after his recent stance”. “At his personal request”, he was taken to a checkpoint at a nearby village where he “took a taxi for Damascus”, the statement added.
