Mick Hartley

Christina Lamb in the Sunday Times:

For two long minutes, the gunmen emptied their Kalashnikovs into the car. Inside were six people — five students in their twenties and a schoolboy of 15.

For two long minutes, Ghassan Kordab, 59, and his wife, Raja, 55, sat in the vehicle in front, unable to do anything but watch as their three sons and three nephews were massacred.

“I watched as they shot my sons,” said Kordab. “They shouted, ‘You Druze are pigs!’ then opened fire. They kept shooting for two minutes. I saw flesh flying in the air.

“My wife was screaming, ‘My children! I want my children!’ I didn’t know what to do.”

The gunmen, who the couple insist belonged to Syrian government forces, then dragged the bodies out, stripping them of their rings and mobile phones, even their student backpacks.

The horrific story is one of hundreds in Syria’s southern province of Sweida, home to the country’s Druze minority, which for two weeks has been engulfed in some of the deadliest violence since the Syrian civil war began in 2011….

Not unrelated – from MEMRI TV:

On the backdrop of the current massacres of the Druze in Suwayda, Syria by Syrian President Ahmad Al-Sharaa's forces, Turkey-based Egyptian Islamist scholar Wagdy Ghoneim said in a video that was posted to YouTube by Imam Al-Din Al-Dahdouh on July 19, 2025 that the Druze are infidels and traitors. He said that they had been hiding officers who had served in deposed Syrian president Bashar Al-Assad's army, that they got paid millions for this, that they have been coordinating with the Jews, and that they have attacked Muslims and mutilated their corpses. He prayed that Allah unite the Druze and the Jews in Hell, saying that anybody who can go fight them will be rewarded by Allah. He added: "Pray that Allah enables me to go myself."