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ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) said Thursday that Druze inmates in a prison facility northeast of Damascus have announced a hunger strike to protest “deteriorating living and health conditions.”
“Dozens of individuals from the Druze community announced the hunger strike amid tragic and unbearable conditions, driven by ongoing mistreatment alongside the decline of their humanitarian and health situation inside the prison,” the UK-based war monitor announced, citing its sources.
The war monitor - which relies on a network of local sources - added that the Druze detainees are living in a state of “physical and psychological exhaustion” with no signs of “improvement or an imminent breakthrough in their situation nearly a year after their abduction and detention in Adra Central Prison.”
Intercommunal fighting erupted between Druze factions and Bedouin tribes in Suwayda in mid-July, later escalating with the involvement of Damascus forces and Israel.
More than 1,340 members from the Druze community - including 99 women and 53 children - were killed, according to a March report by UN investigators. Major international human rights and international monitoring organizations implicated Damascus-affiliated forces in massacres and human rights abuses.
Also, an unidentified number of them were abducted and primarily taken to Adra Central Prison.
The conflict was the second serious test for the Syrian interim government after it assumed rule in January 2025. Nearly four months before the clashes in Suwayda, Damascus-affiliated forces killed more than 1,700 Alawaites - mostly civilians - after loyalists of the Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad staged a rebellion in the Syrian coastal areas.
Prisoner exchange between Damascus and the National Guard, a unified paramilitary group of 30 Druze factions under the leadership of the community’s spiritual leader Hikmar al-Hajri, has resumed.
Damascus and Druze fighters were carrying out a prisoner swap following talks reportedly mediated by the United States.
Syrian state media aired footage of buses transporting 61 civilians from the Druze-majority province of Suwayda who had been detained during last year’s clashes. The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) is supervising the process. In exchange, 25 members of forces affiliated with Damascus were set to be released.