The Syrian regime forces have pushed additional reinforcements to the As-Suwayda governorate, consisting of vehicles carrying security forces personnel coming from the capital, Damascus, amid the continued detention of officers by locals protesting the arrest of a university student.
According to Al-Raased, a website specialized in covering news of the As-Suwayda governorate on Facebook, five buses carrying soldiers, and eight vehicles fitted with medium “Dushka” machine guns, arrived in the city. Hours before, military reinforcements consisting of four medium buses (vans) and two four-wheel drive “Hilux” vehicles entered the city.
The reinforcements that arrived in the governorate today, Friday, April 26, were preceded by similar ones that entered As-Suwayda city also on Thursday, following the tension in the region after the detention of regime officers by local groups, demanding the release of a university student originally from As-Suwayda, who was at Tishreen University in Latakia governorate.
Suleiman Fakhri, editor-in-chief of Al-Raased, told Enab Baladi that the reinforcements fall within the regime’s periodic security movements, which the locals are accustomed to.
He added that escalation is unlikely, but the local factions in As-Suwayda are preparing for a possible escalation, at a time when one of the regime’s officers is still detained in the governorate, and the factions refuse to release him before freeing the university student.
Yesterday, Thursday, a local group detained several officers of the Syrian regime’s forces, including the head of the immigration and passports office in the city, Brigadier General Manar Mahmoud, and his companion, on the Damascus-As-Suwayda road concurrently with the detention of another officer and personnel near al-Mazra’a town west of the governorate.
The incident comes in the backdrop of the arrest of the university student Danny Obeid, who has been detained in Latakia city for three months due to his participation in the protests in As-Suwayda.
Muhannad Zein al-Din (a pseudonym for security reasons) and an activist in the As-Suwayda movement, told Enab Baladi that the regime’s reinforcements coincided with a mobilization by local factions and civilian groups, which set up temporary barriers on some roads leading to As-Suwayda, and later removed them.
Similar incidents have been recurring in As-Suwayda governorate for years, where the regime previously arrested civilians from the governorate on political charges and refused to release them, prompting locals to detain elements or officers of its forces in As-Suwayda to secure the release of detainees.
Protests continue peacefully in As-Suwayda governorate in southern Syria for about eight months on a daily and weekly level, during which the locals gather in a single demonstration to voice their demands.
A wide segment of the governorate’s residents, including students attending universities in other provinces, participates in the protests without interruption.