Syrian government forces entered the battle-hit province of Suwayda on Tuesday, followed by an announcement of a complete cease-fire by the country’s defense minister.
The declaration came a day after clashes between armed Yazidi and Bedouin groups killed dozens and the state-run news agency reported that Israel had launched a strike in the area.
Defense Minister Murhaf Abu Qasra said in a statement that after an “agreement with the city’s notables and dignitaries, we will respond only to the sources of fire and deal with any targeting by outlaw groups.”
The clashes began with a series of tit-for-tat kidnappings and attacks between members of local Bedouin tribes and Druze armed factions in the southern province, a center of the Druze community.
Government security forces that were sent in on Monday to restore order also clashed with Druze armed groups. During the day, Israel struck a Syrian government military tank and claimed it was acting to protect the Druze religious minority.
In Israel, the Druze are seen as a loyal minority and often serve in the armed forces.
State-run news agency SANA did not give any details about Tuesday’s strike. However, the Britain-based war monitor, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, said Israel struck a tank belonging to the Syrian military as forces began to move deeper into Suwayda city. There was no immediate statement from the Israeli military.
Earlier Tuesday, religious leaders of the Druze community in Syria called for armed factions that have been clashing with government forces to surrender their weapons and cooperate with authorities as they entered the provincial capital of Suwayda. One of the main religious authorities later released a video statement retracting the call.
The initial statement called for armed factions in Suwayda to “cooperate with the forces of the Ministry of Interior, not to resist their entry, and to hand over their weapons to the Ministry of Interior.”
The statement also called for “opening a dialogue with the Syrian government to address the repercussions of the events.”
The commander of Internal Security in Suwayda Governorate, Brig. Gen. Ahmad al-Dalati, welcomed the statement and called for “all religious authorities and social activists to adopt a unified national stance that supports the Ministry of Interior’s measures to extend state authority and achieve security throughout the province.”
Sheikh Hikmat Al-Hijri, a Druze spiritual leader who has been opposed to the government in Damascus, said in a video message that the previous statement by Druze leaders had been issued after an agreement with the authorities in Damascus but “they broke the promise and continued the indiscriminate shelling of unarmed civilians.”
“We are being subjected to a total war of annihilation,” he said.
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 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.
Clashes have on several occasions broken out between forces loyal to the government and Druze fighters since the fall of Bashar Assad in early December in a lightning anti-regime forces offensive.
The latest round of fighting has raised fears of another spate of violence in the country. In March, an ambush on government security forces by fighters loyal to Assad triggered days of clashes. Hundreds of civilians were killed, most of them members of the minority Alawite sect that Assad belongs to. A commission was formed to investigate the attacks but has not made its findings public.
The conflict has also raised concerns about escalating Israeli intervention.
Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz said Monday that the Israeli military “attacked targets in Syria as a message and a clear warning to the Syrian regime – we will not allow harm to the Druze in Syria.”
While many Druze in Syria have said they do not want Israel to intervene on their behalf, factions from the Druze minority also harbor suspicious of the new authorities in Damascus.
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