Throughout the Syrian war, the Southern Province of Sweida, in coordination with the Syrian army, had succeeded in protecting itself against the jihadist attacks on the province’s Western border with Deraa, and on the Eastern flank, adjacent to the Syrian Desert.
By the end of summer 2018, as the war seemed to reach an end in Southern Syria, the local paramilitary units were partially demobilized. The Syrian army units stationed in Sweida’s Desert were redeployed to the southwest of Deraa, where they joined the fight against an Isis enclave nestled at the foot of the Israeli controlled Golan Heights.
The demobilization was a fatal mistake. On July 25, at dawn, hundreds of Isis fighters emerged from the Eastern Desert. They carried out a coordinated attack marked by suicide bombings, shootings, and stabbings targeted mainly at the Eastern villages overlooking the Syrian Desert. The poorly armed local villagers, men and women, from 12 besieged villages fought bravely against the invaders, but six villages succumbed to the fundamentalist group as it carried out door-to-door massacres with the help of some local Bedouins.
The attack had two objectives. The first was to force the Syrian army to halt its offensive against the Isis enclave in Deraa. The second was for ISIS to provoking a massive exodus from the Druze Mountains.
Within less than two hours, hundreds of Druze fighters rushed to the targeted areas, killing more than 80 ISIS members. Dozens of Druze fighters from Mount Hermon and from the Damascene suburbs of Jaramana and Ashrafiet Sahnaya arrived that same day and joined the combat. The besieged areas, including the six ambushed villages, were liberated by the end of day, boosting the morale of the local population. More than 250 civilians and local Druze fighters lost their lives and another 250 people were injured, in what has become the bloodiest day for the province since the beginning of the war.
