Blood in the Streets and Death in the Air: Residents Survey Damage in Syrian City

After five days of hunkering down at his home as violence seized the southern city of Sweida, 33-year-old Hossam emerged on Thursday to survey the damage. Wherever he went, the smell of death lingered in the air.

Scattered across the roads, he said, were burned-out cars. Storefront windows were smashed, their shelves looted. Pools of blood stained the streets.

“The smell of corpses in Sweida is unbearable,” said Hossam, who asked to be identified by his first name for fear of retribution. “The smell is everywhere.”

Since Sunday, the southern province of Sweida in Syria has been consumed by violence that has killed more than 500 people, according to the Britain-based war-monitoring group Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. It is the deadliest violence in this corner of Syria since the height of the country’s nearly 14-year civil war, and it has deepened fears among residents like Hossam that Syria’s new authorities are unable to provide for their security.

Hossam said he had barricaded himself inside his house for days as clashes between government forces and militias of the Druse minority raged around him. Hossam, who is Druse, ventured outside only after a truce calmed the fighting and drove around his city, surveying the damage.

At Sweida’s public hospital, he saw cars speed up to the emergency entrance every few minutes, carrying people injured in the clashes. Others came in search of relatives they had lost contact with, now feared dead, he said.

This was the third major outbreak of sectarian violence in Syria since the ouster of longtime dictator Bashar al-Assad last year. It renewed fears that Syria could descend into sectarian conflict as the country’s new leaders seek to assert their authority over a nation fractured by the long civil war.

In March, government forces were involved in a killing spree on the Syrian coast that left dead about 1,600 people, mostly from the Alawite minority, according to the Observatory. Another outbreak of violence just outside Damascus in May killed more than 100 people, mostly from the Druse minority.

The violence in Sweida began with an exchange of attacks and kidnappings between Sunni Muslim Bedouin tribes and militias of Druse, who practice a secretive religion rooted in Islam.

Since the new government came to power in December, a collection of Druse militias has secured Sweida and has so far refused to integrate their forces into the new national army.

As the unrest in Sweida worsened, the government deployed military forces to Sweida to try to quell the conflict.

But some Druse militia leaders — who deeply distrust Syria’s new Islamist authorities — believed that the mostly Sunni government forces were coming to attack the Druse.

The militias then mobilized to repel the incoming government forces and clashed with them in a spiral of violence that drew in an Israeli military intervention.

At least 516 people — including soldiers, fighters and civilians — were killed in the ensuing violence, according to the Syrian Observatory.

The United Nations’ special envoy to Syria, Geir O. Pedersen, said in a statement on Thursday that there had been “serious allegations of extrajudicial executions and arbitrary killings” as well as reports of looting, civilians subjected to “humiliating treatment” and the mutilation of corpses.

A spokesman for the Syrian government did not immediately respond to a request for comment about the allegations. Syria’s new president, Ahmed al-Shara, said in a televised address on Thursday that the authorities would “hold accountable those who have transgressed against and abused our Druse people, as they are under the protection and responsibility of the state.”

For Druse across the country, the violence deepened fears that new leaders were not willing or able to protect Syria’s minorities from more extreme factions in the Sunni-led government’s security forces.

Nizar, 45, another Druse resident of Sweida, was at work in the city center on Sunday when fighting broke out between Bedouins and Druse militias that have effectively controlled Sweida since the Assad government collapsed. He asked to be identified only by his first name for fear of retaliation.

Nizar said he had tried over the next two days to drive back to his home to join his wife and daughters. But he was turned back repeatedly after hitting checkpoints where Druse fighters warned him of Bedouin snipers stationed along the road.

He saw cars with injured passengers — some bleeding in the back seat.

He said that he had made it home on a back road by Tuesday at dawn and that, reunited with his family, he felt a sense of relief wash over him.

But, hours later, the Druse militias that had been protecting his neighborhood vanished from the streets and government forces entered. He said he feared they would carry out revenge attacks on the Druse residents.

After about 30 minutes, he said, one of the soldiers, wearing a mask, came to his door and pointed his weapon at Nizar. The soldier demanded his identification card, asked if he had weapons and then ordered him to hand over the keys to his vehicle, saying he needed to search it.

“Then they left, taking the cars,” Nizar said.

As the violence unfolded, the hospital in Sweida filled with hundreds of injured people and others who were killed in the clashes, according to residents and a nurse.

The nurse, who asked not to be named for fear of retaliation, said that as the government security forces entered the hospital earlier this week, they destroyed cameras and stole medicine from the hospital warehouse.

The soldiers also would not allow the hospital staff to transfer some bodies to the morgue, tossing them instead in a corridor, according to the nurse and a video verified by the Syrian Observatory and viewed by The New York Times.

By Thursday morning, as the fighting subsided, residents began pouring into the hospital, looking for treatment or for relatives who they feared had been killed and brought there.

Hossam said he arrived at the hospital around 9:30 a.m. on Thursday. Standing in the morgue’s yard, he saw bodies laid in rows, some covered in tarps.

“Some bodies weren’t even covered,” he said.

One man was trying to read the tattoos on a body lying in the yard to confirm it was his son. He had his brother’s name on his right arm and “mom” on his left, Hossam said.

When the father realized it was his son, he broke down in tears, Hossam added.

Elsewhere in Sweida, wails echoed across neighborhoods as families buried relatives, residents said. Some said they had covered bodies that were left in the open with cardboard or rugs to protect them from the sun while the fighting raged — too afraid to leave their homes and lay them to rest.

Later on Thursday, Hossam said he had joined a group that was burying four neighbors.

“Everyone wailing and crying. Every single person was crying,” Hossam said. “The entire neighborhood was full of farewells.”

Hwaida Saad contributed reporting.