Ceasefire announced after dozens killed in Syrian sectarian clashes

Syrian government forces deploy at Mazraa village (Ghaith Alsayed/AP)

Syria’s defence minister has announced a ceasefire shortly after government forces entered a key city in Sweida province on Tuesday.

The announcement came a day after sectarian clashes that killed dozens, and after a state-run news agency report that Israel had launched a strike in the area.

Defence 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 Sunni Bedouin tribes and Druze armed factions in the southern province, a centre of the Druze community.

Clashes erupted between Sunni Bedouin clans and Druze militias (Ghaith Alsayed/AP)

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 said 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 in deeper into Sweida city.

Earlier on 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 Sweida.

One of the main religious authorities later released a video statement retracting the call.

The initial statement called for armed factions in Sweida 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 Sweida Governorate, Brigadier General 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.

Some videos on social media had showed armed fighters with Druze captives, inciting sectarian slogans and beating them.

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 one 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 Middle East 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 President Bashar Assad in early December in a lightning rebel offensive led by Sunni Islamist insurgent groups.