For fourteen years, As-Suwayda in southern Syria stood apart from the country’s devastating civil war, its streets largely untouched by destruction. That fragile calm collapsed in mid-July 2025.
What began as an ordinary day spiraled into sudden armed clashes. At the city’s gates, regime-affiliated forces advanced with armored vehicles and snipers took positions overlooking the neighborhoods. Inside, Druze militias mobilized hastily while checkpoints emerged to halt Bedouin tribal incursions, turning once-quiet streets into contested frontlines.
The fighting scarred the city: empty roads, charred buildings, and families caught between shifting lines of fire. Beyond the battles, a humanitarian crisis quickly unfolded. Bedouin families, facing both violence and threats of deportation, joined thousands of displaced residents seeking refuge in temporary shelters.
This photographic series follows that abrupt descent from the arrival of armed convoys and tense defensive preparations, through the street battles and visible scars of destruction, to the mass evacuations that revealed the human cost of Suwayda’s sudden war.
Charred Avenue
A Bedouin fighter walks with a weapon near damaged cars and buildings in Sweida
Sealed Gate
Members of the Internal Security Forces stand guard at an Internal Security Forces checkpoint working to prevent Bedouin fighters from advancing towards Sweida
Entry Under Smoke
Smoke rises while Syrian security forces sit in the back of a truck as Syrian troops enter the predominantly Druze city of Sweida
Victory in the Square
Members of Syrian security forces celebrate together after Syrian troops entered the predominantly Druze city of Sweida
Control Secured
Syrian security forces walk together along a street after clashes between Syrian government troops and local Druze fighters resumed in the southern Druze city of Sweida
Tribal Convoy
Bedouin fighters ride on a vehicle along a street as Sweida province has been engulfed by nearly a week of violence triggered by clashes between Bedouin fighters and factions from the Druze
Snipers in Homes
Members of Syrian security forces take position inside a house after clashes between Syrian government troops and local Druze fighters
Night Exodus
Civilians ride a bus as they leave Sweida after hundreds of Bedouin civilians were evacuated from Syria s predominantly Druze city of Sweida
Families in Transit
Bedouin women and children ride a bus as they leave Sweida after hundreds of Bedouin civilians were evacuated from Syria s predominantly Druze city of Sweida
Temporary Shelter
A Bedouin family from Sweida sits with their children in a school that is used as a shelter centre in Dael Deraa governorate