Israeli army resumes strikes on southern Syria

Pro-government troops came under Israeli drone attack amid advance towards Shahba

Israeli soldiers on patrol near the occupied Golan Heights in Syria. EPA

The Israeli army carried out a new drone strike on Tuesday against pro-government troops in southern Syria, sources in Jordan said.

The strike on Sweida province was the Israeli army's first attack on Syria since its air strikes last week on government troops and allied militia forces from Syria's Sunni majority, who had aimed to capture Sweida city. The provincial capital and heartland of the Druze minority has been the centre of heavy fighting in Syria.

Thousands of militants have been posted near the border with Jordan as part of an offensive by the government to control Suweida. Israel has accused Damascus of breaching demilitarisation deals that forbade the Syrian government from posting the military in the south. The government is mainly comprised of Hayat Tahrir Al Sham, which led to an assault that toppled former president Bashar Al Assad in December.

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One of the sources said the latest Israeli attack came after the pro-government forces used Turkish-made Shahin drones to attack the city of Shahba, near the provincial capital of Sweida.

“They want to capture Shahba because it is seen as a weak underbelly to Sweida [city],” said the source, who added that the use of drones indicates that Syrian army personnel drawn from HTS ranks are among the attacking forces.

The target of the Israeli strike on Tuesday was a column comprised of fighters loyal to Damascus, whose members have been attacking a rural region near Shahba, using Turkish drones and Grad rockets, the sources said. The area is near the main road between Sweida and Damascus, a supply artery until the government laid siege to the governorate last week.

Israel did not confirm the drone strike but said its military was still operating in southern Syria. It said Israeli troops questioned some alleged weapons dealers after apprehending them there overnight.

The Jordanian military said on Tuesday that it had killed an unidentified man who was among a group of "infiltrators" who tried to cross into the kingdom from Syria. It did not give details about the incident.

The fighting in Sweida was the latest sectarian violence to throw doubt on Syrian President Ahmad Al Shara's ability to unite the country. A Syrian fact-finding committee revealed on Tuesday that 1,426 people were killed during a massacre of Alawite people along the Mediterranean coast in March.

Investigators said they had identified 298 people implicated in "serious violations" during the March violence. These included premeditated killings, torture, looting and burning of homes, they said.

However, the committee concluded that Syrian commanders did not give orders to commit breaches, but gave orders to halt them.

Syrian government forces stand on an earth barrier built during their deployment in the south of the country. AFP

The latest fighting in the south ended with a US-brokered truce, under which pro-government forces withdrew last week from Sweida city but remained in the mostly Druze governorate.

Suwayda24, a network of citizen journalists, said a pro-government militia called “the army of the clans” attacked grain silos near the road on Monday, and used drones to attack Shahba, a city “full of the displaced” from the rest of the governorate. There were no immediate reports of casualties.

Last week, Israel mounted dozens of raids against Syrian security formations to defend the Druze, a sect of several hundred thousand in Syria whose leaders say is facing one of the biggest threats to its existence.

The government has mounted three waves of incursions against Sweida since June 10, saying order needed to be restored after Sunni-Druze clashes in the city, sparked by the abduction of a Druze merchant. The government said Druze militias killed hundreds of Sunnis in Sweida after its intervention.

Sweida was a centre of a non-violent protest against the Assad regime in the last year of his rule. But the Druze spiritual leadership, which had mostly opposed the former regime, also resisted the takeover of power by HTS, accusing the group of extremism and non-commitment to democracy.

US diplomatic pressure on Syrian authorities, and Israeli raids, halted the main thrust of the offensive on Sunday. However, Sweida remains under siege by the central authorities.