South Syria violence deaths top 1,000, claims monitor

A Syria monitor said on Sunday that the death toll from violence in the country’s south involving Druze fighters and their Bedouin rivals, as well as government forces, armed tribes and Israel, had topped 1,000.

- Agencies

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said those killed since July 13 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.

US-brokered ceasefire

Syria's armed Bedouin clans on Sunday announced that they had withdrawn from the southern city of Sweida following over a week of clashes and a US-brokered ceasefire, as humanitarian aid convoys started to enter the battered city.

The clashes between militias of the Druze religious minority and the Sunni Muslim clans threatened to unravel Syria's already fragile postwar transition. Israel also launched dozens of airstrikes in the Druze majority Sweida province, targeting government forces who had effectively sided with the Bedouins.