Druze leader slams ‘genocidal campaign’ against community in Syria

Syrian Druze spiritual leader Sheikh Hikmat al-Hijri on Thursday condemned what he called a “genocidal campaign” against his community after two days of deadly sectarian clashes left 101 people dead.

The violence poses a serious challenge to the Islamist authorities who ousted longtime ruler Bashar al-Assad in December.

It comes after a wave of massacres in March in Syria’s Alawite coastal stronghold in which security forces and allied groups killed more than 1,700 civilians, mostly Alawites,…