The death toll due to the outbreak of sectarian violence this week in Syria has exceeded 100, a war monitoring group said Thursday after the disturbances extended to new areas.
Violence broke out on Tuesday in the city of Jaramana after an audio clip circulated on social networks that sought to be a cleric of the Duse minority that insulted the prophet Muhammad. The cleric denied the accusation, and the Interior Ministry of Syria said that his initial findings showed that he was not the person in the clip.
Nuncaberness, armed Muslim groups begged attack areas, including Jaramana with large populations of Duse on the outskirts of the capital, Damascus. Druse’s militias responded in force to protect their neighborhoods and the government sent their own strength to quell the disturbances.
On Wednesday, the clashes extended to another city on the outskirts of the south of the capital, Ashrafieh Sahnaya. Early Thursday, violence spilled from the outskirts of Damascus to Sweida, a region controlled by Duse in southern Syria.
Blood spill has increased fears that a country where religious minorities had already felt deeply vulnerable since the overthrow of the Assad dictatorship in December will fracture even more.
This was the second important outbreak of sectarian violence since a rebel coalition knocked down President Bashar al-Assad and took power.
That coalition was directed by the Islamist group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, which was linked to Al Qaeda, and included other armed Islamist groups with more extreme ideologies. Many of these groups have not been taken under the control of the new government and the new authorities of Syria have shown little capacity to control them.
The Syrian Observatory of Human Rights, a War Monitor based in Britain, said that the number three -day death tolls increased to 101 for Thursday.
The observatory reported for the first time on Thursday that extremist militants had killed 35 Duse on the road that connects Sweida with Damascus, and five Duse fighters in a village in the Sweida region.
Those killed in Ashrafieh Sahnaya on Wednesday included a former mayor of the area, Hassan Warwar, and his son, the observatory said.
The Observatory said that 20 of the government security forces have also killed this week and 10 of allied groups.
The Duse, who practice a religion that is a branch of Islam, have well -organized militias, based in Sweida, who have been reluctant to be integrated into the army of the new government.
Israel, who has a close relationship with Druse Israeli, also entered the fray on Wednesday, launching air attacks against what characterized “agents” who had attacked the civilians of Druse Sirio.
The new Islamist leaders of Syria have fought to absorb the complex network of armed groups operating throughout the country in a national army. Besids Druse’s militias, there are Ared features that support the government, who, according to Drouse’s activists and militants, interviewed this week, seemed to be involved in the clashes with the Druse.
Abu Hassan, a commander of Druse’s militia in Sweida who passes through a Guerre Nom, said thousands of fighters had fought in several places on Wednesday between Sweida and Daraa, another city of the southwest. He said that Duse’s militants were fighting Bedouin militants allied with the government, among others.
The governor of the area that includes Jaramana and Ashrafieh Sahnaya, AMR al-Sheikh, blamed “prohibited groups” for starting initial violence at a press conference on Wednesday, but did not identify the groups. Mr. Al-Sheikh did not recognize the presence of armed factions of the government, saying that only that the official government forces had been deployed to protect the two cities.
However, other security officials have recognized in private that the government cannot control all armed groups that support it.
“We have the right to maintain our weapons to protect our random factions from the thesis,” said Loubna Baseet, a Duse activist in Sweida, who said the attacks continued on Thursday in villages in the Sweida field, including Al-Sawara.
The government “states that they are sending all these military reinforcements to protect us, but we do not trust them,” he added.
Despite the sectarian battle lines, the Government General Security Forces include Duse and other minorities, as well as combatants of the country’s Sunni Muslim majority. Duse was among the general security forces killed this week.
But despite the promises of inclusion of the government, Syrian minorities remain nervous, an anxiety that deepened after a wave of sectarian murders of March hit the coastal region of Syria, home of the country’s towwites, the minority group.
REFAM MOUSHED Contributed reports.
