Victims continue to be found after Syrian forces carried out a massacre of the Druze religious minority in July.

Five bodies of members of Syria’s Druze religious minority killed two months ago during a government assault on Suwayda Governorate have been found, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) reported on 7 September, bringing the total death toll from the violence in Suwayda to 2,026, SOHR added.

The bodies were found in the Mouwasat and Mujtahid hospitals in Damascus. The victims had been missing since Syrian government forces attacked Suwayda in July, massacring hundreds of Druze civilians on the basis of their religion.

The SOHR reported further that the bodies of seven additional people, including a woman, were found after they were executed by members of the Ministries of Defense and Interior during the attack on Suwayda City.

Sunni extremists filling the ranks of Syria’s new security forces, led by President Ahmad al-Sharaa, a former Al-Qaeda commander, view the Druze as apostates from Islam who should be killed for the religion.

Victims included Druze civilians killed by the Syrian government using artillery, snipers, and field executions. Fighters from Druze self-defense militias, Syrian government security forces, and Bedouin militias were also killed in the fighting, including from Israeli bombing.

Many Druze civilians, including women, are still missing after being abducted by Syrian government forces and allied Bedouin fighters during the attack.

An uneasy truce remains in effect in Suwayda, which is still under a Syrian government blockade, preventing sufficient food, fuel, and medicine from entering the governorate.

SOHR added that armed factions affiliated with the Syrian government violated the truce on Sunday in the vicinity of the town of Ara in the Suwayda countryside.

Armed factions directed gunfire from 23mm machine guns at the town. Armed groups also directed heavy machine gun fire from their positions in Tal Hadid toward Suwayda City.

Intermittent clashes erupted between the two sides on the Ara-Kharba front line in southwest Suwayda, SOHR reported further.

The violence in Suwayda began on 13 July when local Bedouins kidnapped a Druze fruit seller on the road between Suwayda and Damascus. The situation quickly escalated with clashes breaking out between Bedouin militias and armed Druze factions. 

On 15 July, Syrian President Ahmad al-Sharaa ordered the Syrian army and internal security forces to deploy to the region, under the pretext of halting the clashes and restoring security and civil peace.

However, rather than seeking to stop the fighting, Sharaa’s forces joined Bedouin armed groups.

Saying that they “came to fight the Druze,” Syrian forces carried out the brutal massacre of hundreds of Druze civilians, attacked Druze cultural symbols, and systematically looted and burned Druze homes.

Thousands of reports, pictures, and videos have now circulated online showing Druze civilians being executed, beheaded, kidnapped, and humiliated by government and tribal fighters.

Videos and photos of government and tribal fighters humiliating captured Druze men by shaving off their traditional moustaches and murdering them soon gave way to even more shocking videos.

Syrian forces filmed themselves cutting off the heads of corpses with knives, executing unarmed Druze men in the street after demanding to know their religion, massacring entire families in their homes, and abducting women to take as slaves.

Amnesty International documented the deliberate shooting and killing of 46 Druze civilians, 44 men and two women, by government and government-affiliated forces on 15 and 16 July. The executions occurred in a public square, residential homes, a school, a hospital, and a ceremonial hall in Suwayda Governorate, the rights group stated.

The Cradle Media report