At least five people were killed on Thursday in clashes between local militants and residents of a town in the Damascus countryside, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR), a Britain-based monitoring group with a vast network of sources on the ground.
The SOHR said the violence erupted after a group of militants affiliated with the Fourth Division of the Syrian army, an elite brigade led by President Bashar al-Assad’s brother Maher al-Assad, killed a man in the town of Zakia while attempting to arrest him on Wednesday evening.
According to the opposition-affiliated news website Sawt al-Asima (Damascus Voice), Nazeer Shaaban, a 37-year-old resident of Zakia, was shot multiple times in the chest by Jamal Noureddine, a member of the Fourth Division-affiliated group.
The killing reportedly came after Shaaban found out that Noureddine and Muawiya Tohme, the leader of the local militia, had intentionally bombed a shop that maintained water well equipment in the town earlier this month because of a dispute with its owners.
