Syria’s interim President Ahmed al-Sharaa says that protecting the Druze citizens and their rights is “our priority,” after Israel vowed to destroy Syrian government forces attacking Druze in southern Syria.
In his first televised statement after the powerful Israeli airstrikes on Damascus on Wednesday, Sharaa addresses Druze citizens saying “we reject any attempt to drag you into hands of an external party.”
“We are not among those who fear the war. We have spent our lives facing challenges and defending our people, but we have put the interests of the Syrians before chaos and destruction,” he says in remarks addressed at Israel.
He adds that the Syrian people are not afraid of war and are ready to fight if their dignity is threatened.
Sharaa also charges that “the Israeli entity resorted to a wide-scale targeting of civilian and government facilities.”
This led to a “significant complication of the situation and pushed matters to a large-scale escalation, except for the effective intervention of American, Arab, and Turkish mediation, which saved the region from an unknown fate,” he says.
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