More than 350 people have been killed since the weekend in violent clashes in Syria’s southern Sweida province, a war monitor says, updating an earlier toll.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights says that since clashes erupted on Sunday, 79 Druze fighters were killed along with 55 civilians, 27 of them in “summary executions by members of the defense and interior ministries,” while 189 defense and interior ministry personnel and 18 Bedouin fighters were also killed. Earlier, the monitor had said the death toll was 300.
The Observatory says the victims in Sweida include a media worker, identifying him as Hassan al-Zaabi. The Syrian journalists’ union in a statement says Zaabi was shot dead by “outlaw gangs” in Sweida province “while performing his professional duties,” without saying whom he worked for.
The Britain-based monitor, which relies on a network of sources inside Syria, additionally reports 15 defense and interior ministry personnel killed in Israeli strikes in southern Syria.
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