In Jaramana near the Syrian capital, Evelyn Azzam, 20, said she fears that her husband, Robert Kiwan, 23, is dead. The newlyweds live in the Damascus suburb, but Kiwan would commute to Sweida for work each morning and got trapped there when the clashes erupted.
Azzam said she was on the phone with Kiwan when security forces questioned him and a colleague about whether they were affiliated with Druze militias. When her husband’s colleague raised his voice, she heard a gunshot. Kiwan was then shot while trying to appeal. “They shot my husband in the hip from what I could gather,” she said, struggling to hold back tears. “The ambulance took him to the hospital. Since then, we have no idea what has happened.”
A Syrian Druze from Sweida living in the United Arab Emirates said her mother, father, and sister were hiding in a basement in their home near the hospital, where they could hear the sound of shelling and bullets from outside. She spoke on condition of anonymity out of fear her family might be targeted.
She had struggled to get hold of them, but when she reached them, she said, “I heard them cry. I have never heard them this way before.”
Another Druze woman living in the UAE with family members in Sweida, who also spoke on condition of anonymity, said a cousin told her that a house where their relatives lived had been burned down with everyone inside it.