DAMASCUS, Syria (AP) — At least 10 people were killed on Tuesday after clashes broke out in a suburb of the Syrian capital between local gunmen belonging to the minority Druze sect and pro-government fighters, a war monitor and an activist group said.
Syrian Druze gunmen have clashed in recent weeks with government security forces and pro-government gunmen in the southern Damascus suburb of Jaramana.
Late Tuesday, government representatives and Jaramana dignitaries reached an agreement to end the fighting, compensate victims' families and work on bringing perpetrators to justice, according to a copy of the deal circulated in Jaramana and seen by The Associated Press.
It was not immediately clear if the truce will hold for a long time as similar deals in the past collapsed afterward.
The latest round of fighting broke out around midnight Monday after an audio clip circulated on social media of a man criticizing Islam’s Prophet Muhammad.
The audio was attributed to a Druze cleric. But cleric Marwan Kiwan said in a video posted on social media that he was not responsible for the audio, which angered many Sunni Muslims.
"I categorically deny that the audio was made by me,” Kiwan said. “I did not say that, and whoever made it is an evil man who wants to incite strife between components of the Syrian people.”
The Interior Ministry said in a statement it was investigating the audio clip, adding that its initial probe showed the cleric was not responsible. The ministry urged people to abide by the law and not to act in a way that undermines security.
The Druze religious leadership in Jaramana condemned the audio but blasted the “unjustified armed attack” on the suburb. It urged the state to publicly clarify what happened.
“Why does this keep happening every now and then? It’s as if there’s no state or government in charge. They need to establish security checkpoints, especially in areas where there are tensions,” said Jaramana resident Abu Tarek Zaaour.
The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said at least 10 people were killed, four of them attackers and six Jaramana residents. The activist media collective Suwayda24 said 11 people were killed and 12 were wounded.
Rayan Maarouf, editor-in-chief of Suwayda24, said gunmen were holding the attacker's bodies and talks are on the way to hand them over.
In late February, a member of the security forces entered the suburb and started shooting in the air, leading to an exchange of fire with local gunmen that left him dead. A day later, gunmen came from the Damascus suburb of Mleiha to Jaramana, where they clashed with Druze gunmen leaving one Druze fighter dead and nine other people wounded.
On March 1, Israel's Defense Ministry said the military was instructed to prepare to defend Jaramana, asserting that the minority it has vowed to protect was "under attack" by Syrian forces.
The Druze religious sect is a minority group that began as a 10th-century offshoot of Ismailism, a branch of Shiite Islam. Over half of the roughly 1 million Druze worldwide live in Syria. Most of the other Druze live in Lebanon and Israel, including in the Golan Heights, which Israel captured from Syria in the 1967 Mideast War and annexed in 1981.
The worst internal clashes in Syria since the fall of President Bashar Assad in early December occurred last month in the country's coastal region and involved members of the minority Alawite sect that the former president belonged to.
The clashes between Assad loyalists and government forces were accompanied by revenge killings that left more than 1,000 people dead, including hundreds of civilians, according to a war monitor. The Associated Press has not been able to independently verify the figures.
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Associated Press journalists Abdulrahman Shaheen in Damascus and Bassem Mroue in Beirut contributed to this report.
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