After several days of hunkering down at his home as violence seized the southern city of Sweida, 33-year-old Hossam emerged on Thursday to survey the damage. Wherever he went, the smell of death lingered in the air.
Scattered across the roads, he said, were burned-out cars. Storefront windows were smashed, their shelves looted. Pools of blood stained the streets.
"The smell of corpses in Sweida is unbearable," said Hossam, who asked to be identified only by his first name for fear of retribution. "The smell is everywhere."
Since Sunday, the southern province of Sweida in Syria has been consumed by violence that has killed more than 500 people, according to the war-monitoring group Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. It is the deadliest violence in this corner of Syria since the height of the country's nearly 14-year civil war, and it has deepened fears among residents like Hossam that Syria's new authorities are unable to provide for their security.
Hossam said he had barricaded himself inside his house for days as clashes between government forces and militias of the Druze minority raged around him. Hossam, who is Druze, ventured outside only after a truce calmed the fighting and drove around his city, surveying the damage.
At Sweida's public hospital, he saw cars speed up to the emergency entrance every few minutes, carrying people injured in the clashes. Others came in search of relatives they had lost contact with, now feared dead, he said.
They poured through the hospital's morgue, which was packed with bodies of soldiers and civilians killed, according to Hossam. Scores more bodies were laid out in a yard outside, their corpses covered with tarps after the hospital ran out of body bags.
This was the third major outbreak of sectarian violence in Syria since the ouster of longtime dictator Bashar Assad last year. It renewed fears that Syria could descend into sectarian conflict.
New York Times News Service