BEIRUT (AP) — A Syrian-American man of the Druze religious minority was killed in southern Syria when he got caught up in sectarian clashes there last week while visiting family members, relatives and officials said Tuesday.
The U.S. State Department confirmed the death of U.S citizen Hossam Soraya in the city of Sweida and extended its condolences to his family. His relatives and friends told The Associated Press that Saraya, in his mid-30s from Oklahoma, was killed in an attack last Wednesday.
The violence in Sweida provice, where the city of Sweida is the provincial capital, erupted earlier this month between the Druze community, an offshoot of Shiite Islam, and the local Sunni Bedouin tribes, drawing in Syrian government forces, which effectively sided with the Bedouins.
Hundreds of people were killed — both civilians and combatants — before a ceasefire calmed the fighting, only for clashes to restart days later. The U.N. International Organization for Migration said more than 130,000 people were displaced during the fighting.
The fighting threatened Syria’s fragile transition and underscored the difficulties the new government faces as it tries to consolidate control over the country, months after Islamist-led insurgents ousted longtime autocrat Bashar Assad last December. Neighboring Israel also intervened, striking Syrian forces — actions Israel said was in defense of the Druze, who are also a significant minority in Israel.
A raid by gunmen in military uniform
The clashes started as a series of tit-for-tat kidnappings between armed Bedouin clans and Druze militias. Government forces intervened to stop the hostilities but effectively sided with the Bedouins.
On Wednesday, Soraya was abducted with his brother Karim, their father Ghassan and three other relatives from the family home by gunmen who later shot and killed them in a square in Sweida, his friends and relatives said, speaking on condition of anonymity fearing reprisals.
The gunmen told them they were government forces and assured the women nothing would happen to their men as they took them away, one of Soraya’s friends said. The gunmen returned later and threatened the women and children, before leaving without harming them but taking off with gold and other valuables from the house, the friend said.
They said they believe government forces were behind the killings but did not elaborate.
The Syrian Defense Ministry says Tuesday it was investigating “shocking and serious violations committed by an unknown group wearing military uniforms” in Sweida, without giving further details. The ministry did not specifically mention Saraya’s killing.
Oklahoma Sen. James Lankford said on Monday he was heartbroken over Saraya’s killing.
“We are praying for his family, friends, and the entire community as they grieve this senseless loss.” Lankford said in a post on X, formerly Twitter.
Fellow Oklahoma Sen. Markwayne Mullin meanwhile said that he is working with “partners in the region to learn more.”
Trying to reach the family
After new of the violence broke out, Saraya’s relatives in America could not get a hold of him and other male family members in the Druze-majority city. They were told by remaining relatives in Sweida of the raid and that Saraya and the others were taken away by gunmen.
Then, to their horror, they recognized Hossam and the other men from the family in a video posted on social media showing gunmen in military uniform sprayed their relatives with automatic fire as tehy were kneeling on the asphalt in a Sweida roundabout.
Another video that surfaced later, shows their relatives being marched off by at least 10 armed men in military uniform, chatting among themselves, smiling and posing for the camera.
A life in America
Although Hossam had been living in the United States since 2014, he remained engaged in the community back home in Syria.
He and his brother co-founded an online school named after their family for Syrians abroad interested in completing their education with their native country’s curriculum, with millions scattered around the world after the almost 14-year civil war that erupted in 2011 and ended with Assad’s ouster.
On the school’s social media page, Syrians and Oklahomans paid tribute to Hossam and his family after their deaths were announced.
More than half of the roughly 1 million Druze worldwide live in Syria. The others live in Lebanon and Israel, including in the Golan Heights, which Israel captured from Syria in the 1967 Mideast War and annexed in 1981.
Most Druze in Syria have supported a more diplomatic approach with the new government in Damascus but the clashes in Sweida have left many doubtful of a peaceful coexistence the new leaders in the post-Assad era.
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Associated Press writer Farnoush Amiri in New York contributed to this report.
