On June 5, a Druze sheikh in Qalb Lozeh, a village in Syria’s northwest Idlib province, sent out a desperate voice message over WhatsApp calling for help against fighters from the steadily approaching al-Nusra Front, al Qaeda’s Syrian affiliate.
“They’ve been coming to our homes, and [they] want to remove our sons, our boys between 10 and 14 years old, and put them in a training camp for two months. We don’t know what they’re going to teach them, and they’re threatening us,” the sheikh said in the recording. “They want to take away our weapons.”
Two weeks later, al-Nusra Front fighters stormed several homes and killed over 20 Druze in Qalb Lawzeh, including men over 70 years old and boys as young as 8, reportedly over a property dispute. In the days that followed, reports from Idlib claimed that al-Nusra Front fighters in the area refused to allow residents to bury their dead, and insisted that they adhere to Islamic law or else be evicted from the area.
These latest attacks come just weeks after Abu Mohammed al-Joulani, the leader of al-Nusra Front, touted his group’s tolerant attitude toward the Druze in an interview with Al Jazeera. The Druze “are present in the liberated territories and are not harmed,” he said.