Syria’s new rulers set up a committee to probe attacks on civilians in recent sectarian violence

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DAMASCUS, Syria (AP) — Syria’s new authorities have set up a committee tasked with investigating attacks on civilians during recent sectarian violence in the country’s south, officials said Thursday.

The fighting in Sweida province earlier in July killed hundreds of people, displaced tens of thousands, and threatened to unravel Syria’s fragile postwar transition.

It was sparked by tit-for-tat kidnappings between armed Bedouin clans, mostly Sunni, and fighters with the Druze religious minority, an offshoot of Shiite Islam. Syrian government forces intervened to end the fighting, but effectively sided with the clans.

Disturbing videos and reports soon surfaced of Druze civilians being humiliated and killed in public, sometimes accompanied by sectarian slurs. Druze groups later launched revenge attacks on Bedouin communities.

Syria’s Justice Ministry said the committee would work to uncover the “circumstances that led to the events in Sweida,” investigate attacks and refer those implicated in them to the judiciary, state-run news agency SANA reported. The committee is to submit a final report within three months.

A similar committee was formed in March, when sectarian violence on Syria’s coast killed hundreds of civilians from the Alawite religious minority, also a Shiite offshoot.

Attacks by armed groups affiliated with former President Bashar Assad, a member of the Alawite minority, prompted Damascus to send security forces, which descended on the coast from other areas of the country, joined by thousands of armed civilians.

That committee found there had been “widespread, serious violations against civilians,” including by members of Syria’s new security forces and that more than 1,400 people, most of them civilians, were killed.

Its four-month investigation identified 300 people suspected of crimes, including murder, robbery, torture and looting and burning of homes and businesses. The suspects were referred for prosecution, the committee said but did not disclose how many were members of the security forces.

The outbreaks of violence have left Syria’s religious and ethnic minorities increasingly suspicious of the country’s new authorities, led by interim President Ahmad al-Sharaa, who previously led the Islamist insurgent group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham.