A Syrian Red Crescent vehicle preceded the small bus as it made its way through the no-man’s land separating the last checkpoint manned by Druze factions at the foot of the Jabal al-Druze mountain from the checkpoint controlled by the general security, the Syrian police, in Busra, near the Jordanian border. Around 20 Bedouins were evacuated from and surrounding villages on Thursday, July 24, at midday. “We are scared. The situation is not yet stable. We prefer to leave and wait for things to calm down,” said a man in his 30s from Rsas, a mixed Bedouin-Druze village south of Sweidaefused to give his name for security reasons.
Two of his cousins, who are farmers aged 30 and 35, were captured by Druze fighters on July 17. “For the first two days, we knew where they were and who was holding them. But when their captors realized this, they moved them and only told us that they were alive. They let me hear their voices. They were completely broken. I could tell by their voices that they had been mistreated,” the Bedouin said, careful to share as little as possible. “Those who arrested them are civilians, but they took them to the Military Council of , the largest faction in the predominantly Druze city in southern Syria,” he finally said. “They asked us to put pressure on the clans to release their Druze prisoners in exchange.”
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