Sweida faces new hardship as main bakery risks shutdown

Sweida continues to experience a string of worsening crises that exhaust residents day after day. Power outages, water shortages, and endless bread queues have become the defining features of daily life in the city and its surroundings.

In recent days, the automatic bakery has seen heavy overcrowding, with hundreds of residents from both the city and its countryside lining up to get bread, as most bakeries have shut down due to the lack of flour supplies, which have not reached the city following the recent escalation. The siege, imposed by armed groups affiliated with the transitional government on roads leading to the area, has left the main public bakery as the sole distributor, which is now on the brink of closure.

In this context, Samah Nader, the supervisor of the central automatic bakery, stated: “The increasing crowd is due to a large influx of residents from the western countryside fleeing shelling and destruction, and the lack of flour in rural bakeries, which has placed unprecedented pressure on the bakery.”

The current bakery cannot meet the soaring demand without interruption. Though it remains operational, indicators show that its flour reserves are nearly depleted, with no sufficient quantities available to support other bakeries in the city, according to Nader.

Alongside the bread crisis, stories of displacement intersect with those of hunger and despair at the bakery’s doors. One displaced woman from the village of “Maqous” recounted her story after her home was burned: “I fled first to the southern countryside, then to the city in search of safety. Now, we are homeless, without a provider, and we don’t even have enough to feed ourselves or our children. I sleep on the ground, and the sidewalk has become our shelter as we await a miracle or a glimmer of hope in a homeland torn by war and ignored by the world.”

Others described the tragic conditions endured by most of Sweida’s population: electricity and water cuts, fuel shortages, and the exhausting wait for bread that is now also at risk of vanishing.

The suffocating siege and severe shortages of water and food continue in Sweida, despite the declared ceasefire, while the death toll rises. Syrian and local human rights organizations have issued warnings of an impending humanitarian catastrophe.

Since July 13, Sweida has witnessed a series of attacks initially launched by armed groups linked to Syria’s transitional government. These were followed by assaults from government forces themselves, and later, after the withdrawal of those forces, by other armed groups affiliated with the government under the name “the tribes,” prompting a response from local Druze military forces.

The clashes among those parties ended following Israeli aerial intervention and the announcement of a ceasefire agreement between Damascus and Israel, which was approved by Druze community leaders in Sweida.

Today, the overall death toll has risen to 1,448, including children and women. Among them, 258 individuals, including 12 women, 8 children, and an elderly man, were executed in the field, according to documentation by the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which called for an end to the violations and the activation of genuine mechanisms to monitor the truce.

A-H 

ANHA