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SWEIDA: An aid convoy entered the city of Sweida in southern Syria via the main highway from Damascus on Thursday, for the first time since a major outbreak of sectarian violence last month shook the country’s fragile recovery from nearly 14 years of civil war.
Clashes broke out in mid-July between government forces and local Bedouin tribesmen on one side, and fighters from the country’s Druze minority on the other. Hundreds were killed and tens of thousands displaced, and allegations have surfaced of government fighters executing Druze civilians and looting and burning houses.
Though the fighting has largely calmed down, government forces have surrounded the southern city. The Druze have said that little aid is going in, calling it a siege.
Sweida’s provincial government said in a statement Thursday that a convoy had arrived in the city via the main highway, carrying UN aid intended “to meet the residents’ basic needs.” State-run Al-Ikhbariya TV said the convoy included 18 trucks carrying food baskets, cleaning supplies and solar-powered lamps.
The main highway had been closed since the fighting, with the aid convoys that did go in taking a circuitous route by way of Daraa province, which is south of Sweida.
UN Humanitarian Coordinator for Syria Adam Abdelmoula in a statement last week after visiting Sweida said that the health system was “under severe strain,” with hospitals and clinics “facing acute shortages of essential medications, including insulin, dialysis supplies, and cancer treatments.”
The statement added that prices for basic goods had soared, with families waiting in long lines for fuel and other essentials.
“Humanitarian assistance alone cannot resolve these challenges,” it said. “Restoring safe and reliable flows of commercial goods is critical to stabilizing the situation and preventing further deterioration.”

PARIS: A prominent French sports journalist sentenced to seven years in prison in Algeria at the end of June is in “fighting mood” but feels “isolated,” his parents told AFP after visiting their son earlier this month.
Christophe Gleizes, who is being held in the city of Tizi Ouzou, is being detained against the background of escalating political tensions between Paris and its former north African colony.
“Even if his morale is high, even if he is in fighting mood, he feels completely cut off from the world, isolated,” his mother, Sylvie Godard, told AFP in an interview at the Paris offices of media rights campaigners Reporters Without Borders (RSF).
Along with his stepfather, Francis, she is calling for the case of her son, the only French journalist currently detained abroad, not to be used to “settle political scores” between France and Algeria.
Gleizes, who specializes in African football and contributes to the top-selling So Foot magazine, was convicted in Algeria of “glorifying terrorism,” a charge his parents said was “totally absurd.”
An appeal has been filed and is expected to be heard in the autumn.
Algeria has also jailed French-Algerian writer Boualem Sansal, sentenced to five years for damaging national unity.
As well as these two cases, there have been tit-for-tat expulsions of consular staff.
President Emmanuel Macron angered Algiers in July 2024 when he backed Moroccan sovereignty over the disputed Western Sahara, where Algeria supports the pro-independence Polisario Front.
Francis Godard described his stepson as a “kind of collateral victim of the bad relations between France and Algeria at the moment.”
“We don’t want Christophe’s case to be used to resolve political issues with which Christophe has nothing to do,” said Sylvie Godard.