South Syria violence death toll tops 1,000

DAMASCUS, July 20, 2025 (AFP) – A Syria monitor said Sunday that the death toll from violence in the country’s south involving Druze fighters and their Bedouin rivals, as well as government forces, armed tribes and Israel, had topped 1,000.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said those killed since last Sunday included 336 Druze fight-ers and 298 civilians from the religious minority group, 194 of whom were “summarily executed by defence and interior ministry personnel”.
The dead also included 342 government security personnel and 21 Sunni Bedouin, three of them civil-ians “summarily executed by Druze fighters”. Another 15 government forces were killed in Israeli strikes, the Observatory said.