Everywhere in the Syrian city of Jaramana on Wednesday, there were armed men, their movements staccato with tension.
There were men in jeans or the black baggy pants traditionally worn by the Druse sect, rifles slung across their chests; men of no particular uniform blocking the roads into town; men with vests full of ammunition motioning tersely to one another. They were too preoccupied even to smoke.
The reason lay inside a Druse religious hall: seven velvet-draped coffins, surrounded by hundreds of sobbing women in white shawls. They held aloft the photos of seven men killed when assailants believed to be Islamist extremists attacked Jaramana with gunfire and shelling on Tuesday morning.
Even as the funeral processions got underway, the men guarding them were receiving messages about spreading clashes and rising death tolls in a largely Druse town nearby.
While a few trucks bearing the logo of the Syrian security forces circulated in the city and community leaders said government forces had formed a cordon around Jaramana, most of the men with guns — including most of those killed — were residents who had organized to defend themselves, locals said.
“We’re not seeing anything from the government,” said Ghassan Azzam, who was standing in the crowd outside the cemetery. “We’re just protecting ourselves.”
