{"id":129053,"date":"2025-08-30T15:43:50","date_gmt":"2025-08-30T15:43:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/npasyria.com\/en\/?p=129053"},"modified":"2025-08-30T15:43:52","modified_gmt":"2025-08-30T15:43:52","slug":"druze-spiritual-leader-urges-icc-action-over-suwayda-killings","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/npasyria.com\/en\/129053\/","title":{"rendered":"Druze spiritual leader urges ICC action over Suwayda killings"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>SUWAYDA, Syria (North Press) <\/strong>\u2013 Hikmat al-Hijri, head of the Druze community in Syria, on Saturday called on the international community to open an independent investigation into what he described as \u201catrocious crimes\u201d committed against the residents of Suwayda in southern Syria.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><a><\/a>\u201cIn a statement, al-Hijri said: \u2018What the region is witnessing is systematic extermination,\u2019 and called for urgent investigations to punish those responsible.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The statement listed what it described as atrocities carried out in the province, including the killing of children in front of their mothers, public executions of elders, burning of homes with people inside, and the abduction of residents who were later used as hostages in political conflicts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Al-Hijri urged the International Criminal Court (ICC) to prosecute perpetrators and called for impartial inquiries into attacks, which he said also involved indiscriminate shelling of villages.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">He further appealed for the deployment of international monitoring missions to protect civilians from ongoing violence, an end to political and military support for armed factions, and pressure on the Syrian government to uphold a ceasefire agreement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><strong>By Abdulsalam Khoja<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">&nbsp;<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><a><\/a>&nbsp;<\/h3>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>SUWAYDA, Syria (North Press) \u2013 Hikmat al-Hijri, head of the Druze community in Syria, on Saturday called on the international community to open an independent investigation into what he described as \u201catrocious crimes\u201d committed against the residents of Suwayda in southern Syria. \u201cIn a statement, al-Hijri said: \u2018What the region is witnessing is systematic extermination,\u2019 [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":129054,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pgc_sgb_lightbox_settings":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[39,3,2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-129053","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-home","category-politics","category-syria"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v28.2 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Druze spiritual leader urges ICC action over Suwayda killings<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"SUWAYDA, Syria (North Press) \u2013 Hikmat al-Hijri, head of the Druze community in Syria, on Saturday called on the international community to open an\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" 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