The death toll from this week’s outbreak of sectarian violence in Syria has surpassed 100, a war monitoring group said on Thursday after the unrest spread to new areas.
The violence erupted on Tuesday in the city of Jaramana after an audio clip circulated on social media purporting to be of a cleric from the Druse minority insulting the Prophet Muhammad. The cleric denied the accusation, and Syria’s Interior Ministry said that its initial findings showed that he was not the person in the clip.
Nevertheless, armed Sunni Muslim extremist groups began attacking areas including Jaramana with large Druse populations on the outskirts of the capital, Damascus. Druse militias responded in force to protect their neighborhoods and the government sent in its own forces to quell the unrest.
On Wednesday, the clashes spread to another town on the southern outskirts of the capital, Ashrafieh Sahnaya. Early on Thursday, violence spilled from the outskirts of Damascus to Sweida, a Druse-controlled region of southern Syria.
The bloodshed has raised fears that a country where religious minorities had already felt deeply vulnerable since the overthrow of the Assad dictatorship in December will fracture further.
This was the second major outbreak of sectarian violence since a rebel coalition toppled President Bashar al-Assad and seized power.
