Volkswacht Bodensee - Syria troops quit Druze heartland after violence leaves over 500 dead

The southern province has been gripped by deadly sectarian bloodshed since Sunday, with hundreds reportedly killed in clashes pitting Druze fighters against Sunni Bedouin tribes and the army and its allies.

The city of Sweida was a shadow of its former self on Thursday, AFP correspondents on the ground reported, with shops looted, homes burnt and bodies in the streets.

"What I saw of the city looked as if it had just emerged from a flood or a natural disaster," Hanadi Obeid, a 39-year-old doctor, told AFP.

In a televised speech, Islamist interim President Ahmed al-Sharaa said community leaders would resume control over security in Sweida after the deployment of government troops on Tuesday fuelled the sectarian bloodshed and prompted Israeli military intervention.

An AFP photographer counted 15 bodies on the street in the centre of Sweida on Thursday after government forces pulled out.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights has said more than 500 people have been killed in sectarian clashes in the Sweida province since Sunday.

Israel had hammered government troops with air strikes during their brief deployment to the southern province and also struck the military headquarters in Damascus, warning that its strikes would intensify until the Islamist-led government pulled back.

Sharaa announced in a televised address that "responsibility" for security in Sweida would be returned to community leaders "based on the supreme national interest".

- Promise of 'protection' -

Sharaa, whose Islamist-led interim government has had troubled relations with minority groups since it toppled longtime president Bashar al-Assad in December, also pledged to protect the Druze.

"We are keen on holding accountable those who transgressed and abused our Druze people, as they are under the protection and responsibility of the state," he said.

March saw massacres of more than 1,700 mostly Alawite civilians in their heartland on the Mediterranean coast, with government-affiliated groups blamed for most of the killings.

Government forces also battled Druze fighters in Sweida province and near Damascus in April and May, leaving more than 100 people dead.

Government troops had entered Sweida on Tuesday with the stated aim of overseeing a truce, following days of deadly sectarian clashes.

But witnesses said government forces instead joined the Bedouin in attacking Druze fighters and civilians.

Addressing the Druze, Sharaa attempted to reassure the minority community, vowing that "protecting your rights and freedom is one of our priorities".

- US mediation -

The Syrian president hit out at Israel's military intervention, saying it "resorted to a wide-scale targeting of civilian and government facilities," that would have pushed "matters to a large-scale escalation, except for the effective intervention of American, Arab, and Turkish mediation, which saved the region from an unknown fate".

The United States -- a close ally of Israel that has been trying to reboot its relationship with Syria -- said an agreement had been reached to restore calm in the area, urging "all parties to deliver on the commitments they have made".

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Thursday that the ceasefire was a result of his country's "powerful action".

Israel, which has its own Druze community, has presented itself as a defender of the minority group, although some analysts say that is a pretext for pursuing its own military goal of keeping Syrian government forces as far away as possible from the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights.

Because of the violence in Syria, dozens of Druze gathered in the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights on Thursday hoping to catch a glimpse of relatives on the Syrian-held side who might try to cross the barbed-wire frontier.

Qamar Abu Saleh, a 36-year-old educator, said some people "opened the fence and entered, and people from Syria also started crossing here".

"It was like a dream, and we still can't believe it happened."

Despite having initiated diplomatic contact with a first face-to-face meeting in Azerbaijan earlier this month, Israel remains extremely wary of Syria's new rulers, including Sharaa whose Hayat Tahrir al-Sham movement was once linked to Al-Qaeda.

burs-nad/dcp

H.Weber--VB