Deep grief follows Suwayda’s days of blood

SUWAYDA/DARAA — Deema Saraya, 41, sits at one end of a long table in the vestibule of her family’s home in Suwayda, southern Syria, a cracked mirror at her back. As she raises her eyes, she sees the jagged lines running through the glass in framed photos of relatives and ancestors sitting on a nearby shelf.

In the salon, the wall is littered with bullet holes from when armed men stormed the Saraya home on July 16. During heavy clashes between fighters from the Druze minority—to which the Sarayas belong—and Bedouin fighters, alongside government security forces. 

A cracked photoframe and damage from bullets in the Saraya family home in Syria’s southern Suwayda city, 24/7/2025 (Anagha Subhash Nair/Syria Direct)

Though clashes between the two communities in Suwayda have a long history, what unfolded in mid-July was unprecedented. It began when a Druze vegetable vendor was robbed and abducted by local Bedouins, sparking retaliatory kidnappings and armed confrontations. Days later, Damascus deployed security forces to the south, in what it said was an effort to reestablish order. 

Local Druze factions considered the intervention an invasion and attacked government forces. Soon, the army and general security were fighting, alongside tribal forces. 

Late on July 16, government security forces withdrew from Suwayda. Almost immediately. Druze militias retaliated against Bedouin communities across the province—carrying out killings, burning homes, and looting civilian property.

Many Bedouin families were forced out of their homes or had to flee, while some were trapped or held as hostages. Tribes from neighboring Daraa and across the country mobilized in response, flooding into Suwayda and clashing with Druze forces.

A fragile ceasefire agreement has been in place since July 19. Since then, hundreds of Bedouins have been evacuated from Suwayda in a series of convoys, in a displacement Damascus says is temporary. 

During the days of bloodshed, more than 810 people were killed and 900 were injured in Suwayda city and the surrounding countryside. According to the most recent figures from the Syrian Network for Human Rights (SNHR). Publicly shared videos and photos by armed parties on both sides of the conflict demonstrate grave violations against both the Druze and Bedouin communities, often directed at civilians. 

‘They killed and came back’

Deema Saraya is one of the survivors of her family, which lost eight members in a mass execution by armed forces. She was sleeping on the morning of July 16 when she woke to gunshots and chaos. Her daughter later told her she heard gunmen discussing the number of men inside the Saraya house before entering. 

“I thought to myself that if they entered, they’d kill us all,” Saraya says. 

One of the gunmen, who Saraya says was called Abu Jaafar, was dressed in black clothes like those worn by government security forces. while others wore military garb. Assuring the women that their relatives would be safe. The men led eight Saraya men away, including Deema’s 55-year-old husband, Ali. 

The armed men returned a short while later, alone. The women and children were kept in their house for hours as they took turns looting their home. 

Deema Saraya sits in her home in Suwayda city, 24/7/2025 (Anagha Subhash Nair/Syria Direct)

One of the gunmen threatened to stay the night and rape her, along with constant menacing, Saraya says. At one point, she says she overheard one “ask [another]: ‘Shall we kill them all?’ He replied: ‘No, let them be, there are some pretty ones in there.’” 

After nine hours, the 15 remaining family members took a chance to flee to a neighbor’s house while the gunmen were distracted. deciding “death was better,” Saraya recalls. 

It was only the next morning that the family learned the fate of their loved ones who had been lined up at the city’s Tishreen Square and shot en masse more than 24 hours earlier. “They killed [the men] and came back to us,” Saraya says.

The execution of the Saraya family was documented in a video filmed by their killers, which circulated widely on social media. Similar violations have swelled public anger, including a video of several men in military clothing questioning an unarmed man about his identity. When he said he was Syrian, they asked if he was Sunni or Druze, and shot him when he confirmed he was Druze.

A shoe sits next to a pool of blood in the courtyard of Suwayda National Hospital, 23/7/2025 (Anagha Subhash Nair/Syria Direct)

The dead and the living

Not too far away, at Suwayda National Hospital, the backyard smells strongly of blood and death, the ground littered with boots and bullets. During the fighting, hundreds of bodies were left here, hospital staff tell Syria Direct. Later, relatives came to identify the remains of their family members, while unidentified bodies were placed in a mass grave.

At the grave, roughly a 15-minute drive from the hospital, Basel Yaser Abu Saab says he drove the bodies by truck from the hospital and participated in burying them. The grave contains around 149 bodies, he tells Syria Direct. 

Abu Saab says the hospital collected information and assigned a number to each body before burial, to allow later identification by relatives. Medical staff have told reporters the same. 

Back at the hospital, right outside the entrance, a mound of sand conceals another body, its presence revealed only by a black toe and a pungent smell of decay. 

The living are inside, with their memories and wounds. Maryam, 12, waits with her parents in a sweltering room. They have spent their nights by her side. Her mother feeds her soup, and her father fans her as she lies on the bed, her leg wrapped in white bandages.

“I was at home and there was shelling,” Maryam recalls. “The window broke, and the fragments came [in].” She is still waiting for additional surgeries. 

Her mother breaks down while remembering the trip to the hospital after her daughter’s injury, saying only “horror” when asked to describe it. “I have three daughters—she’s the youngest,” she says, crying. 

A Bedouin man from Suwayda stands in front of his pickup truck, which he used to flee to the Daraa town of Izraa with 60 others, 23/7/2025 (Anagha Subhash Nair/Syria Direct)

‘She died behind me’

In Izraa, a Daraa town around 40 kilometers from Suwayda city, Khitam al-Hawarin, 17, sits in her wheelchair in a school serving as a temporary displacement shelter. As a young girl wheels her around, she grimaces. “Slowly,” she says, in pain. 

Al-Hawarin is from Shahba, a city due north of Suwayda city, home to both Bedouins, like her, and Druze. On July 17, Druze forces from outside the city stormed her family’s home, she says. She fled outside with her relatives, including her mother, 90-year-old grandmother, and cousins Taj and Najwan, aged 15 and six years old. Her elderly grandmother could not keep up and was killed. “She died behind me,” al-Hawarin says. 

Khitam al-Hawarin’s injuries, 25/7/2025 (Anagha Subhash Nair/Syria Direct)

The survivors hid in a rocky place on the road, but were soon spotted and shot at by the fighters. Al-Hawarin was the only survivor.

“They knew I survived as I raised my hand multiple times to my face—I heard one tell the other: ‘Leave her, she’ll bleed to death,’” she explains, her voice steady. 

Al-Hawarin lost consciousness. When she woke, she smelled something burning nearby. Her mother’s body was on fire. “I opened my eyes and tried to put out the fire,” she says, turning away at the memory.

Druze residents of her city found and helped her, she says. Along with her father, who says he was hiding in the area of the house and did not flee with the others, she ultimately made her way to Daraa.  

Those who survived are deeply traumatized. In another school-turned-shelter, Lahjaa Ibrahim, 60, holds her head in her hands, still overwhelmed by fear and exhaustion. She says she walked alone from her village of Walgha to Izraa, as her family and neighbours abandoned her in the chaos. All she carried with her were a few documents and her ID card. 

“There were clashes around and [Israeli] warplanes above me,” she says. “I don’t even know what’s happening in Suwayda—my head hurts. I just walked alone, I’m tired and scared,” she says. 

Lahjaa Ibrahim holds up her ID card, one of the few things she fled with, 25/7/2026 (Anagha Subhash Nair/Syria Direct)

Ibrahim is not the only one still processing what has happened. Al-Hawarin described what she experienced clearly, but struggled to put her feelings into words. 

“I can’t explain,” she says, turning away. 

*Correction 7/29/2025: The initial version of this report misattributed Khitam al-Hawarin’s first name as Fatin. Syria Direct regrets the error.