SYRIA-CRISIS/LEBANON DRUZE Focus on Druze after Nusra kills at least 20 adherents

Record ID: 150951

  • Title: SYRIA-CRISIS/LEBANON DRUZE Focus on Druze after Nusra kills at least 20 adherents
  • Date: 12th June 2015
  • Summary: SIGN, READING (Arabic) "GOD"
  • Embargoed: 27th June 2015 13:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: Lebanon
  • Country: Lebanon
  • Topics: General
  • Reuters ID: LVA7DT8V2AZYVY7QHGB8UC5HAZCD
  • Aspect Ratio: 16:9
  • Story Text: Spiritual figures from the Druze faith gathered in Beirut on Friday (June 12) after at least 20 Druze villagers were killed in Syria by the Nusra Front, raising fears for the minority group in Syria.
    Druze in Lebanon and Israel have made separate appeals for their Syrian kin to be armed to defend themselves against groups such as Nusra and the more powerful Islamic State which has persecuted minorities and fellow Sunnis.
    The Druze faith, related to Islam, Christianity and Judaism, is practiced by around 1.5 million people, mostly in Syria, Lebanon and Israel.
    It is viewed as heretical by the puritanical school of Sunni Islam espoused by al Qaeda and by Islamic State, whose attempts to advance towards a Druze area of southern Syria have added to concerns.
    The shooting in northwest Syria occurred in the village of Qalb Loze in Idlib province, where the Nusra Front is part of an insurgent alliance that has seized wide areas from government control since March.
    The leader of Lebanon's Druze said the incident was an isolated one.
    "Until this moment, numbers say that more than 350,000 were killed in Syria by the Syrian regime and there are more than seven million refugees displaced inside Syria as well as three million outside Syria, between Lebanon, Jordan and Turkey. This was an individual incident and I will deal with it politically through my local and international calls," said Walid Jumblatt, also a member of parliament.
    The killings spiralled from a confrontation that began when Nusra Front members tried to confiscate the house of a villager who fought alongside government forces, the UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported.
    The dead included elderly people and at least one child, the Observatory said.
    A member of the Nusra Front was also killed when villagers managed to seize a weapon from a fighter.
    Syria's state-run news agency SANA described it as a massacre.
    An advance of Islamist fighters towards the Druze heartland of Sweida raises the prospect of another group being drawn deeper into a four-year-old civil war that has killed around a quarter of a million people and made 8 million homeless.
    The Druze spiritual leader in Syria issued a statement on Tuesday (June 9) calling on everyone who could bear arms to join the government army, saying their service would be restricted to Sweida province which was threatened by "impending danger".
    The statement was posted on Facebook by pro-government activists.
    Assad, himself a member of a minority sect, the Alawites, has enjoyed support from many Druze in his fight against an insurgency whose two most powerful groups are Sunni Islamists, Islamic State and Nusra.
    In an interview with Al Jazeera news channel last month, the Nusra Front leader said Alawites must change their beliefs and renounce Assad if they wanted to remain safe.
    Assad's opponents accuse him of manipulating sectarian fears to shore up his support base.
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