Syrian estate agent Fahd Haidar shuttered his business and got out his rifle to defend his hometown of Jaramana when it came under attack this week by militants loyal to the new government.
Seven Druze fighters were among 17 people killed in the Damascus suburb as clashes raged from Monday into Tuesday, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.
On Wednesday, the sectarian violence spread to the nearby town of Sahnaya, where 22 combatants were killed, the Britain-based war monitor said.
Photo: AP
Fourteen years after former Syrian president Bashar al-Assad’s bloody suppression of protests triggered a devastating civil war, Haidar said he feared a return to “chaos,” a slide into a “quagmire of grievances that will affect every Syrian.”
He appealed to the new authorities, who took over after al-Assad’s ouster in December last year, to step back from the brink and find “radical solutions” to rein in “uncontrolled gangs” like those who attacked his mainly Druze and Christian hometown this week.
In Jaramana, Druze leaders on Tuesday evening reached a deal with government representatives to put a halt to the fighting.
On Wednesday morning, an Agence France-Presse correspondent saw hundreds of armed Druze, some of them just boys, deployed across the town.
Behind mounds of earth piled up as defenses, Druze fighters handed out weapons and ammunition.
“For the past two days, the people of Jaramana have been on a war footing,” local activist Rabii Mondher said. “Everybody is scared — of war ... of coming under siege, of a new assault and new martyrs.”
Like many residents in the confessionally mixed town, Mondher said he hoped “peace will be restored ... because we have no choice but to live together.”
Mounir Baaker lost his nephew Riadh in this week’s clashes.
“We don’t take an eye for an eye,” he said tearfully, as he received the condolences of friends and neighbors.
“Jaramana is not used to this,” he said, holding up a photograph of his slain nephew, who was among a number of young Druze men from the town who signed up to join the new security forces after al-Assad’s ouster.
“We’re brought up to be tolerant, not to strike back and not to attack anyone, whoever they are, but we defend ourselves if we are attacked,” he said.
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