More than 100 people were reported killed in late April and early May 2025 as sectarian violence involving Druze fighters, Syrian security forces and other armed groups spread from the Damascus suburb of Jaramana to Ashrafiyat Sahnaya and parts of Sweida province.
The violence exposed the severe security challenges facing Syria's transitional authorities after the December 2024 overthrow of Bashar al-Assad. It also intensified longstanding concerns among Druze communities over security, local autonomy and the integration of armed factions into national institutions.
How the violence began
The immediate crisis followed the circulation of an inflammatory audio recording on social media that was attributed to Druze cleric Marwan Kiwan and purported to contain insults against the Prophet Muhammad. Kiwan denied making the recording, and Syria's Interior Ministry said its preliminary investigation found that he was not responsible.
Despite those denials, armed clashes erupted in Jaramana on April 28-29. Accounts differed over precisely how the fighting began and which armed groups initiated particular confrontations. Contemporary reporting described clashes involving local Druze gunmen, government security personnel and armed men arriving from surrounding areas.
The violence then spread to Ashrafiyat Sahnaya, southwest of Damascus, and into Sweida province. A later European Union Agency for Asylum review said the late-April fighting involved Sunni and Druze armed men and that subsequent clashes in Ashrafiyat Sahnaya reportedly killed more than 100 people, including civilians and militia members.
Death toll reaches 101
On May 1, the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said it had documented 101 deaths connected to the violence in the Damascus countryside and Sweida. The figure was produced by the monitoring organization rather than an official nationwide casualty count and could not be independently verified in full.
The Observatory said the dead included government security personnel and allied fighters, Druze fighters and civilians. It also reported that 35 Druze were killed in an incident on the road linking Sweida with Damascus, while additional deaths were recorded in Ashrafiyat Sahnaya, Jaramana and villages in Sweida province.
The conflicting affiliations of the armed actors made some incidents particularly difficult to establish independently. Reports variously referred to government security forces, government-aligned or supportive armed factions, local Druze militias and tribal fighters. That distinction mattered because Syria's transitional authorities did not exercise uniform control over every armed group operating in the country.
Agreements seek to halt the fighting
As casualties mounted, Syrian authorities and local Druze representatives negotiated agreements intended to stop the violence and establish security arrangements in the affected areas.
Druze leaders in Sweida called for Interior Ministry and judicial police structures staffed by local residents, while also seeking government responsibility for securing the strategically important Damascus-Sweida highway. The arrangements represented an attempt to reconcile local demands for security with the transitional government's effort to bring armed formations and policing structures under state authority.
Later assessments by the European Union Agency for Asylum noted that Druze factions remained divided over integration with Damascus. Some groups were more willing to cooperate with the transitional administration, while others maintained a more confrontational position.
Israel intervenes with airstrikes
The crisis also acquired an international dimension. Israel carried out strikes in Syria during the clashes and said it was acting to protect Druze civilians. Israeli officials warned Syria's authorities against allowing harm to the Druze community.
Those statements reflected Israel's close political and social ties with its own Druze population, but Israel's description of its military actions represented the Israeli government's stated rationale rather than an independently established assessment of the strikes' necessity or effect.
The intervention added another layer to an already volatile security environment. Israel had conducted extensive military operations in Syria following Assad's fall, while the new authorities in Damascus were simultaneously attempting to consolidate control over armed factions and state institutions.
A fragile post-Assad transition
The April-May violence was one of several serious episodes involving minority communities during Syria's political transition. In March 2025, large-scale killings occurred in the country's coastal region during fighting involving government forces, allied armed groups and supporters of the former government, with members of the Alawite community suffering heavily.
The clashes around Jaramana, Ashrafiyat Sahnaya and Sweida therefore deepened fears that unresolved sectarian tensions and fragmented armed authority could undermine the transition. The Druze are a distinct religious community concentrated principally in southern Syria, with additional communities in Lebanon, Israel and the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights.
At the time of the May agreements, the immediate objective was to stop the fighting, secure roads and establish workable local security arrangements. Those agreements did not resolve the larger dispute over weapons, local armed factions and the extent of Damascus's authority in Sweida.
Subsequent events demonstrated how fragile the situation remained. Sporadic confrontations continued after the agreements, and much larger violence again erupted in Sweida in July 2025. The later fighting involved Druze and Bedouin armed groups, Syrian government forces and further Israeli military intervention, underscoring that the security and governance questions exposed by the April-May clashes had not been permanently settled.
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