The smell hit us before we turned the corner into the backyard of Sweida City’s main hospital.
Neatly laid out in lines were rows of white body bags: some of the victims of the vicious bloodletting which the mainly-Druze city has suffered over the past week.
There are more than 90 corpses in the yard, now badly decomposing in the heat.
They are still picking up bodies from the hospital’s front garden as we arrive.
They say they have been unable to bury them because of the fierce fighting around the Syrian city.
Most of the dead here are unidentified and will be buried in a mass grave near the hospital in the hope that a full investigation will be launched in less turbulent times.
Inside the hospital, we’re taken through darkened corridors powered by a generator. The electricity and internet in the city and the surrounding villages are not working.
Homes burning after mass pillaging and 30,000 trapped in besieged city – as Syria’s fragile ceasefire holds
Who are the Druze and who are they fighting in Syria?
Inside Sweida: The Syrian city ravaged by sectarian violence – where bodies line streets and homes are burned
Traumatised patients
Food and water are scarce and the doctors say medical supplies are dwindling. The hospital is in a shockingly dirty state, and many of the people in it are traumatised and frightened.
Dr Obeida Abu Fakher, who is the head of resident doctors, told us that the lack of medical supplies and poor hygiene were now threatening the condition of those saved in emergency operations, some carried out along hospital corridors because the operating rooms were full.
“I think you can smell the bad smell coming from the wound?” Dr Fakher says to us, as another medic delicately replaces the bandage on a young man’s leg.
“This is a very big problem because all the patients we treated in the operations rooms are now (getting infected) and risk dying right here.”
The wards are packed with the civilian victims caught up in Syria’s complex tribal and political violence – the worst since the toppling of the country’s dictator Bashar al Assad by fighters backed by Turkey and led by former Islamist Ahmed al Sharaa.
Among the victims is 21-year-old Hajar, who was nine months pregnant with her first baby when she was shot through both legs.
Medics managed to save her life but not her baby – a victim of this brutal outbreak of violence before even being born.
A male nurse openly weeps in the corner of the ward where Hajar is laying immobile on a dirty hospital bed. Hajar’s bandages hold together her shattered legs and there’s blood still caked on her feet.
“She needs specialist operations which we cannot do right now,” a doctor explains.
Hajar is just one of the many casualties among the dozens crammed in this hospital, as well as the tens of thousands of others affected by what’s happened over the past 10 days of brutality in Sweida.
The UN estimates nearly 130,000 people have fled their homes. The death toll is still being calculated but is thought to be more than a thousand so far.
We have driven through multiple Druze checkpoints to get here. The Druze-dominated area is extremely edgy now and bunkered down behind sand chicanes and armed barricades.
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Homes burning after mass pillaging in city
Who are the Druze and who are they fighting in Syria?
The cycle of tit-for-tat kidnappings and revenge attacks between Druze and Arab Bedoin tribes in the city quickly spiralled into an international crisis when witnesses said some government forces sent in as peacekeepers went on to join Bedoin tribes in the killing spree and robbing of the Druze minority.
Israeli forces, who had warned against any of the Syrian army operating in the area, intervened with airstrikes, killing hundreds of troops as well as civilians.
It was an act of aggression which the new Syrian president would later describe as pushing the country into a “dangerous phase” and threatening its stability.
Days of anarchy
The Israeli bombings forced the government troops to withdraw and, in their absence, Druze militia demanding autonomy from Damascus, embarked on a rash of revenge attacks and kidnappings.
Days of anarchy followed with thousands of Arab fighters including Islamic extremists massing on the area, pillaging and looting mainly Druze homes and businesses and engaging in pitched battles with Druze militia as well as civilians defending their homes and families.
Shocking but mostly unverified social media posts showing executions and beheadings from both Druze and Arab accounts have fuelled the fear and fighting.
There are misinformation and disinformation propaganda campaigns – many by Islamists – which are inciting the violence and cementing divisions.
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The beleaguered new Syrian leader thanked America and the UAE for brokering a ceasefire – but it is shaky and in its infancy, and there’s a massive trust deficit all round which it is tentatively plastering.
This is so much more than a bloody sectarian crisis – and comes at a time when Syria is emerging from more than a decade of civil war and is economically broken.
The crisis is complex, multi-layered and drawing in others.
Anadolu Agency quoted the Turkish foreign minister Hakan Fidan as warning that any attempt to divide Syria will be viewed as a threat to Turkish national security and lead to direct Turkish intervention.
These are words that will chill the many millions of Syrians desperate for peace.
:: Alex Crawford reports from Syria with camera operator Garwen McLuckie, specialist producer Chris Cunningham and Syrian producers Mahmoud Mosa and Ahmed Rahhal.
