Amal Clooney’s plea to save Druze families

Human rights lawyer Amal Clooney has pleaded with the international community to rescue a group of Druze women and children captured by Isis in Syria after one of the women was shot dead last week and more killings were threatened.

Tharwat Abu Ammar, 25, was among 32 women and children taken hostage when their remote desert villages in the southern province of Sweida were attacked by hundreds of militants early on July 25.

The attack left 250 people dead – some burnt alive – and hundreds injured.

A gruesome video posted by the terrorists shows Tharwat kneeling as two masked Isis fighters point their guns at her. One of them warns that if Isis prisoners are not released from Syrian jails within three days, and if the Assad regime does not end its attacks on Idlib, ‘‘the rest of the hostages will know the same fate as this apostate Druze woman’’.

Two shots then ring out and the camera pans away. Pictures of her blood-soaked body were later released.

‘‘The horrific attack by Isis on the Druze community in Sweida, and the taking of women and children as hostages, shows that Isis is still a threat to innocent civilians,’’ said Clooney, pictured. She is a Druze, which is one of the world’s smallest religious minorities.

‘‘[Isis] is committing horrific international crimes before our eyes, yet again. They should be stopped; and they should be punished.’’

The murder was the second from the group. A 19-year-old engineering student, captured with his mother, was beheaded in August.

Three other captives have died, according to community members, including a woman who was heavily pregnant and gave birth. Ten women are left and 18 children. A video shows them all sitting on the floor of a room looking terrified.

‘‘None of us can sleep thinking about these women and kids,’’ said Alex Makled, a Druze businessman from the area, who now lives in Florida and lost 22 members of his family in the attack. He was in one of the attacked villages just a couple of weeks before.

‘‘Our fear is they will continue killing the hostages as they have already killed two and we will lose all the women and children.’’

Druze are a secretive sect, comprising elements of Islam and Christianity. It recently celebrated 1000 years of existence and its members number just over 1 million. Some Druze are in Lebanon, where Clooney comes from. About 700,000 live in Syria, mostly in Sweida.

Like the Yazidis, whose struggle was recognised on Friday by the Nobel peace prize and for whom Clooney has also campaigned, Druze are regarded as heretics by Isis. But until recently Sweida and its Druze population have been relatively unscathed in the seven-year Syrian war, many of them having sons in the Syrian military.

Now they find themselves caught between the Assad regime and Isis, fighting to hold on to its last remaining territory in the desert between Damascus and the Iraqi border under growing pressure from the Us-backed Kurdisharab alliance.