Beirut: Protests in Syria’s Druze-majority Sweida province turned violent on Sunday, killing one protester and a police officer and injuring seven others. Anti-government protests are rare in Syria, where President Bashar Assad stamped a pro-democracy uprising a decade ago. Assad survived the resulting civil war but the conflict plunged Syria into poverty with food security and an energy crisis. Although Sweda has generally been spared civil war, the Druze-majority province has seen anti-corruption protests in the past few years, with tensions rising between residents and the Syrian government led by President Assad.
Dozens of residents gathered at the Sweda Government Building, denouncing the dire economic situation and chanting anti-government slogans before storming the building. Syria’s interior minister said in a statement that those who stormed the building were armed, and destroyed furniture, smashed windows and looted files. The statement said a police officer was killed in an attack on a police station by protesters. Activist media collective Suwayda 24 and the UK-based opposition group Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said security forces opened fire on protesters. A video by Activist Collective shows protesters carrying a wounded man bleeding from his thigh.
?There is a heavy deployment of security forces in the area, and you can still hear gunshots,? Ryan Malouf, head of the Suwayda 24 Collective, told The Associated Press. Nashat al-Atrash, a Druze lawmaker in Syria’s parliament, condemned protesters for raiding the governorate building and called for calm. ?The whole of Syria is going through an economic crisis,? he said on Syria’s Al-Ikhbariya television, claiming that outside forces were trying to stoke tensions through angry demonstrations.
After the Islamic State terrorist group attacked Sweden in 2018, more residents took up arms to defend their neighborhoods. Local activists have reported clashes over the past summer between armed residents and armed groups affiliated with the Syrian government and security agencies.