BEIRUT, July 20. /TASS/. Israeli warplanes attacked positions of Arab tribal militias on the border between the Sweida and Daraa governorates in southern Syria, the Sham TV channel reported.
According to the television channel, the Israeli planes hit ground targets near a checkpoint a humanitarian corridor on Bosra al-Kharir.
The TV channel reported earlier that supporters of the radical Druze cleric, Sheikh Hikmat al-Hijri had pushed Arab militias off the Arika and al-Majdal neighborhoods north of the city of Sweida. Following this, local Bedouins asked for help from neighboring areas. A convoy of Aran militias moving along a motorway from the city of Dei ez-Zor southwards was targeted by Israeli strikes.
Earlier, supporters of Sheikh Hikmat al-Hijri, who calls for closer relations with Israel and defiance of the Damascus authorities, hampered a government delegation accompanying humanitarian cargoes to enter the governorate.
Syrian interior ministry spokesman Nour Eddin Al-Baba said in the early hours on Sunday that armed clashes in the city of Sweida had ceased completely. On Saturday, Syrian Interim President Ahmed al-Sharaa announced an immediate ceasefire in the Sweida province to end clashes between militias and Druze self-defense forces. The ceasefire was announced in accordance with the reconciliation plan, drafted with the help of international mediators.
The situation in Syria aggravated on July 13 when clashes between Arab tribal militias and Druze self-defense groups broke out in the heavily Druze-populated Sweida governorate. On July 15, the Syrian army entered the governorate’s administrative center, the city of Sweida, and launched a mop-up operation to restore order. Shortly after, Israel began delivering airstrikes on Syrian army convoys, claiming that the operation was geared to protect the Druze population. On July 16, Israel hit a number of strategic targets in Damascus.
The Druze are a tight-knit ethnoreligious Arabic-speaking group living mainly in Syria, Lebanon, Israel, and Jordan who adhere to a specific faith that split from Shiite Islam in the Middle Ages. Israeli Druzes live in Galilee in the north of the country and serve in the Israeli army and police along with Jews. However, after Israel gained control over the Golan Heights in the Six-Day War in 1967, most of the Druzes living there have preserved their Syrian citizenship. Syria’s Druze population numbers around 700,000, being the third biggest ethnoreligious minority after the Kurds and Alawites.