Smell of Death Lingers in Syrian City After Spasm of Violence

After five days of hunkering down at his home in the southern city of Sweida, 33-year-old Hossam emerged on Thursday and drove around to survey the damage. Wherever he went, the smell of death lingered.

Everywhere he looked, he said, he saw burned-out cars littering the streets. Storefront windows were smashed, their shelves looted. Pools of blood stained the streets.

“The smell of corpses in Sweida is unbearable,” said Hossam, who asked to be identified by his first name for fear of retribution. “The smell is everywhere.”

Since Sunday, the southern province of Sweida in Syria has been consumed by violence that has killed more than 500 people, according to the Britain-based war-monitoring group Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. What Hossam described was the aftermath of the worst sectarian violence to seize this corner of Syria since the height of the country’s civil war.

He said he had barricaded himself inside as clashes between government forces and militias of the Druse minority raged around him. Hossam, who is Druse, ventured outside after a truce calmed the fighting and drove around his city, surveying the damage.

At Sweida’s public hospital, he saw cars speed up to the emergency entrance every few minutes, carrying people injured in the clashes. Others came in search of relatives they had lost contact with, now feared dead, he said.