BEIRUT — Seventeen gunmen were killed in two days of
clashes in southern Syria’s Sweida province between groups loyal to the
Damascus regime and others opposing it, a war monitor said Wednesday.
اضافة اعلان
Ten loyalists and seven opposition fighters died in
fighting on Tuesday and Wednesday in two villages in the Druze-majority
province, the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said, raising
the toll from 10 a day earlier.
The monitor said more than 40 were wounded,
including civilians.
The Druze, who made up less than three percent of
Syria’s pre-war population, have largely kept out of the country’s civil war
since it started in 2011.
Tensions had risen since Monday, after the abduction
of two people close to the local armed opposition.
The clashes ended when opposition fighters
surrounded the village headquarters of the pro-Damascus faction blamed for the
kidnappings.
The pair were released, the observatory said.
Hundreds of Sweida residents gathered Wednesday in a
square to celebrate, footage broadcast by the local Suwayda24 news outlet
showed.
Opposition fighters found “machines and presses for
the manufacture of captagon pills” in one of the loyalist leader’s bases, the
observatory and Suwayda24 said, referring to an amphetamine-type stimulant
mainly produced in Syria.
Government institutions and security forces are
present in the province, while
Syrian troops are deployed not far from its
borders.
Sweida has been spared most of the civil war
fighting, though local forces had to repel limited rebel attacks in 2013 and
2015.
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