Tribal and Bedouin fighters in the western district of Sweida amid clashes with the Druze, July 19, 2025. (Credit: Abdulaziz Ketaz/AFP.)
First, there’s the white plastic bag that Mahmoud* unzips with a precise, almost jaded motion. Then a body appears beneath this modest shroud. Rigid. Riddled with bullets. An anonymous person, a “young Arab fighter,” says the attendant.He lies on a steel cart, with no space left in any of the morgue's refrigerated drawers. One bag, then another, but still no sign of N.On July 16, this Druze woman was brought to Izraa Hospital, seriously wounded by gunfire in Sweida. She succumbed to hemorrhaging on the way. Seven days later, her body, initially deposited in the locked concrete morgue, out of sight from fevered onlookers in front of the hospital, is missing.Her family, distraught, maintains it’s still in Izraa or nearby — but where, and under whose supervision? No one can answer. They encounter an opaque silence, searching in vain to...
First, there’s the white plastic bag that Mahmoud* unzips with a precise, almost jaded motion. Then a body appears beneath this modest shroud. Rigid. Riddled with bullets. An anonymous person, a “young Arab fighter,” says the attendant.He lies on a steel cart, with no space left in any of the morgue's refrigerated drawers. One bag, then another, but still no sign of N.On July 16, this Druze woman was brought to Izraa Hospital, seriously wounded by gunfire in Sweida. She succumbed to hemorrhaging on the way. Seven days later, her body, initially deposited in the locked concrete morgue, out of sight from fevered onlookers in front of the hospital, is missing.Her family, distraught, maintains it’s still in Izraa or nearby — but where, and under whose supervision? No one can answer. They encounter an opaque silence, searching...