File image.
Two videos that surfaced online on September 7 revealed two horrific crimes which were committed by the forces of the Syrian Islamist-led interim government during the battle against the Druze in the southern governorate of al-Suwayda in July.
The government dispatched its forces to al-Suwayda to break a conflict between the Druze and Sunni Bedouins that broke out on July 13. However, the forces ended up backing the Bedouins and launching a large-scale attack against Druze armed factions to take over al-Suwayda city.
Israel intervened in support of the Druze, citing its historical relations with its own Druze community. The United States brokered a ceasefire on July 16. However, Bedouins from all over the country gathered to attack Druze fighters. The clashes came to a halt only a few days later.
The Druze managed to maintain control over al-Suwayda city along with nearly all of its eastern and southern countryside. Meanwhile, government forces held into most of the northern and western countryside of the governorate.
Mass violations by government forces and affiliated Bedouin fighters were reported during the battle, including summary executions, abductions, rape and looting.
The videos that emerged recently revealed two horrific crimes. In the first, a main battle tank of government forces is seen ramming over a wounded man who was taking shelter under a wall right next to the National Hospital in the city of al-Suwayda.
Miraculously, the man, identified as 19-year-old Safi Khaled Daragham, survived the attack, although he remains in a critical condition with a gunshot wound in his head.
The second video is even more horrific. It shows government forces shooting Saleh Samir Akwan, a 13-year-old Druze child.
In an act of courage, the child charged the troops who were about to execute his father, brother and other relatives in the backyard of their house in the western outskirts of al-Suwayda. The soldiers, however, showed no restraint and immediately opened fire. Later, the dead bodies of Akwan and his relatives were recovered from the house.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights has put the death toll from the battle in al-Suwayda in June at 2,026, including 796 Druze civilians who were executed by government forces and affiliated Bedouin fighters. The London-based monitoring group’s number is not final, however. Many bodies, mainly belonging to Druze civilians, are reportedly still scattered across more than 30 towns held by government forces in the northern and western countryside of al-Suwayda. Others are being held by the government in hospitals in the capital, Damascus.
On September 9 alone, activists from al-Suwayda said that at least 16 bodies of Druze civilians were retrieved from Damascus hospitals.
The battle in al-Suwayda was a major setback for the Syrian government on all levels. Government forces were defeated, and on top of that their barbaric acts discredited Damascus to some extent.
Since the battle, Druze in al-Suwayda have formed a local administrative committee, unified their factions under a single force called the National Guard, and their spiritual leader Sheikh Hikmat al-Hijri has openly called for independence from Syria. With Israel determined to protect the Druze, there is nothing the Syrian government can do for now.
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words of mufti hassoun:
“syria is a civilized country — it embraces all the civilizations of the world because it is the gate to the orient. so [historically] those who wanted to go to china from europe passed through syria. and those who want to go back to europe pass through syria. syria a hundred years ago was far bigger than syria today. in syria in 1900, 118 years ago, palestine, lebanon, jordan and syria were one country.
brevity: is the quality of being brief and concise in expression.
for proper historical reference, please refer to about the year 1022 and the creation of the bank of england
the whole levant destroyed to feed a holiday resort for american and european tourists who claim there ancestors lived their 2000 years ago. the gulf states are just as complicit along with the turkish government.
one bank, one currency, one president, and one nation. there were no religious minorities in it. the reason is that it is the land of abraham, and abraham was the forefather of all prophets. he was the forefather of moses, and of jesus, and the forefather of muhammad, may prayers and peace be upon them.
therefore, syria embraced those divine messages. so, in one family, you can find a christian, you can find a muslim, you can find a secularist, you can find a capitalist and you can
find a socialist. syria embraced everyone. and it also embraced ethnicities like the arabs, the kurds, the syriacs, the assyrians, and the arameans. one could hear many languages: arabic, armenian, chaldean, and aramaic. one could find people from all over the world. if you went to its churches in palestine, which was part of syria at the time, you could find in these churches a greek monk, a french bishop, an aramean bishop, a chaldean, an arab, all of them in the churches praying together
syria has held on to this humanitarian notion that the children of this country are not minorities. there are tens of yazidi villages, they are originally zoroastrian. there are christians of all sects. there are sunnis of all doctrines. there are shias of all doctrines. there are sects from all ethnicities.
they are all a population of 23 million citizens. they have the right to vote. they have the right to occupy any rank in the government, like the ministry of defense. one is never asked whether he is a muslim, a christian, or a jew, sunni, shia, or an arab, or a kurd, or an assyrian. as long as he is a syrian citizen…”from 2015:
mufti hassoun stresses the love and humanity aspects above all.
syrian sufism is a type of ideology that is based on loving others. loving… no others. we believe there are no ‘others’, we are all human. american people are wonderful. i tell the syrian people: ‘don’t blame the american people for what their government does, nor for what the democratic or republican parties do. most of them are representatives for corporations, not for american people.’”
if they take out the jew helpers there those who are on the side of israel wanting to give all the syrian land to them then their crack down is justified. israel installed pro zionist zogbots inside the druze population who want to sell out syrian land for israels greater colonial project. if jewlani wipes out those rats thats fine.
in addition to his wisdom and compassion, mufti hassoun has charitable organizations which helped syrians in some of the hardest days of the war on syria:
in a mid-july and then an august 11th meeting with mufti hassoun in damascus, he explained that the organization (the association of raising the standard of health and social status) of which he is director had two hospitals and ten clinics daily giving medical care for free to up to 1500 of aleppo’s poorest.
one of these hospitals was the mentioned omar ibn abdul aziz hospital. it had three operating rooms, an mri, nine dialysis machines, 12 incubators, and 50 beds…
mufti hassoun explained:
in 1985 we started construction of the hospital, and in 1992 the hospital started operating. we treated for free over 400 patients daily, people from a very poor neighbourhood…
http s://voic esfromsy ria.com /gran d -munfti-habsso un-by-eva-ba rtl ett/
karene eva
yesterday at 2:39 am ·
molham hassoun:
“barrel bombs…
i challenge anyone to say that the mufti issued a fatwa regarding barrel bombs. in response to these liars, this is what his eminence the mufti called for when aleppo was bombarded with the hell cannon, targeting mosques, homes, children, and women. (we and any rational person are against barrel bombs, against the hell cannon, and against the killing of innocents, regardless of their religion, sect, or ethnicity
his eminence’s words were that civilians must evacuate, and he urged, not issued a fatwa (and this is a big difference). he did not mention barrel bombs or anything similar.
mufti hassoun was indeed telling the truth about the incessant mortaring & hell canon shelling ( & sniping) of the terrorists onto civilian areas of aleppo (and damascus, and elsewhere…).
his words were constantly distorted, mistranslated or flat out lied about by western, gulf & zionist media. he is a man of peace and generosity, love and forgiveness. he should not be imprisoned or tortured.
by the end of 2016, nearly 11,000 civilians had been killed by terrorists in aleppo–civilians, not syrian military.
some excerpts from my writings in 2016, when i went 4 times to aleppo:
“one of the older charities in aleppo is the association of raising the standard of health
and social status, established in 1964. in the 1970s, syria’s grand mufti, dr. ahmad badr al-din hassoun, became the director of the association. even during the current situation, it every month provides 3,000 families with aid, including medicine, food aid, and when needed, school clothes and supplies.
the storage room of mufti hassoun’s mosque in aleppo is crammed full of the association’s aid items, also including mattresses, blankets, and
diapers and baby-related items to be given to those in need.
in damascus, mufti hassoun explained further about the association’s charitable work, and the attacks by terrorist factions in aleppo.
“we have two hospitals and ten medical clinics in aleppo. every day, they received between 1,000-1,500 patients. treatment and medicines are free.
terrorists invaded the first hospital, the omar ibn abdul aziz hospital, in the maadi district. it used to have three operating rooms, an mri, and fifty beds. the terrorists stole most of this.
it also had three ambulances, gifts from europe, which operated as mobile clinics. we used to send them to villages around aleppo with both a female and male doctor, for those who couldn’t get into aleppo. the terrorists stole the ambulances and mounted machine guns on them.
the second hospital, in ashrafiya, has thirteen floors and 250 rooms. the hospital as a building is finished, and the first and second floors are operational as medical clinics. however, it is near beni zeid area, where terrorists are, including many snipers. we stopped further work on and the hospital because of the sniping. some nurses and doctors were killed by the sniping.”
these are some of the medical and charitable initiatives in aleppo which will never make the headlines, as they defy the corporate lies on sectarianism in syria and a lack of doctors in aleppo.
ramadan prayers in the rowda mosque, where grand mufti hassoun used to give sermons. according to his assistant, before the war on syria about 500 women regularly came to pray at the mosque.
six or so months ago, a mortar hit the mosque. it bounced off the dome and fell outside in the courtyard. there were about 400 children here learning the quran. if it had gone through the roof, it would have killed a lot of children,” he said.
the worshippers at this mosque are predominately sunni, in a city secured by the syrian government. this is notable in that it contradicts the western media’s blatant propaganda about a sectarian war, a “sunni uprising against the government”.
from aziziya district, on july 4, half a kilometer away, the explosion of a terrorist-fired bomb. around 5 pm, this is a busy time when streets are packed with cars and pedestrians; terrorists know they can kill and maim more civilians when attacking at these busy hours. minutes later, an anti-aircraft explosive bullet landed roughly 15 metres away from my aziziya venue. had it landed on one of the parked cars, there would have been many casualties.
a day later, such an explosive bullet killed the mother of an aleppo friend, at her home.
hell cannon-fired gas canister bombs litter the countryside around aleppo and on the route to nubl and zahra’a. these, and larger variations, are what western-backed terrorists have rained down on the city of aleppo, as well as besieged foua and kafarya in idlib governorate (see more on foua and kafarya).
abdul karim assad, 7, has painful face disfiguration from a terrorist-fired mortar which burned his face. under siege at the time, the boy was only treated with basic medical care in a bare-bones hospital in zahra’a. the boy is not originally from nubl, but from idlib, from which his grandfather fled when terrorists invaded. he is another poster child for the terrorism inflicted upon syria.
when i met him in july 2016, dr. antaki continued to be vocal about the media manipulations and flagrant lies about the reality on the ground in aleppo.
“all of the campaigns which were launched by the western media concerned the east part of aleppo, which is the part controlled by the ‘rebels’. all the media reported that the people there are suffering, the buildings are destroyed and that the syrian government are doing ‘war crimes’.
but, what we are receiving in the part controlled by the syrian government is much worse than in the east part.
nobody speaks about what is happening in the western part of aleppo. there are not only tens of mortars every day which fell on the western part of aleppo, but hundreds, and every day we have hundreds killed or wounded.
and nobody spoke about it. when the media spoke about one supposed hospital destroyed in the eastern part, one week after, the main maternity hospital in aleppo was hit by bombs sent by the ‘rebels’, and women were killed, and nobody spoke about this.”
dr. nabil antaki gave the following overview of life for the civilians of government-secured aleppo, from mid-2012 until our july meeting.
since july 2012, the main area of aleppo
receives every day mortars, bombs and gas canisters, sent by the ‘rebels’ on the civilians living in aleppo. here you have human damage more than there, but less physical destruction, because here we are receiving mortars and gas canister bombs. if a mortar hits the building, it might make a hole the size of a window, but also kill five people at once. in the part of aleppo under the government control, every day we have dozens of injured and killed.