Another regime convoy reportedly blocked by Druze from leaving province

Armed Druze militants reportedly prevented a regime convoy consisting of six trucks carrying large rockets from leaving Suwayda province, pictures of which were posted by the independent local news website Suwayda Khabar on Wednesday.

The regime was moving the rockets from a radar brigade in a western village and seemingly heading towards Damascus when armed supporters of the Sheikhs of Dignity Druze movement seized the trucks and took them to an undisclosed location, reported Suwayda Khabar.

The incident was a “misunderstanding,” a resident of Suwayda city who runs a pro-regime news page told Syria Direct on Thursday, that occurred because of  a “misunderstanding between some riled-up youth and the regime military leadership.” The pictures, he added, are real.

“The young men thought the rockets were being moved outside of Suwayda but they were being actually being moved to another area inside the province,” added the administrator, who asked to remain anonymous.

This incident is the second time followers of the Sheikhs of Dignity have prevented the regime from moving heavy weapons in the province this week; on Sunday, armed members of the group turned back a column of tanks en route to Damascus from the Suwayda base they came from.

In a speech delivered by the group’s leader Sheikh Waheed al-Balaus on Sunday, who is alternately critical of both the regime and rebels, he announced that he “would not accept, under any pretense, that the army’s equipment be moved from its [current] locations.”

-Photo courtesy of Swaida Khabar