Syria's new authorities have set up a committee tasked with investigating attacks on civilians during recent sectarian violence in the country's south, officials said Thursday. The fighting in Sweida province earlier in July killed hundreds of people, displaced tens of thousands, and threatened to unravel Syria's fragile postwar transition.

It was sparked by tit-for-tat kidnappings between armed Bedouin clans, mostly Sunni, and fighters with the Druze religious minority, an offshoot of Shiite Islam. Syrian government forces intervened to end the fighting, but effectively sided with the clans. Disturbing videos and reports soon surfaced of Druze civilians being humiliated and killed in public, sometimes accompanied by sectarian slurs. Druze groups later launched revenge attacks on Bedouin communities.

Syria's Justice Ministry said the committee would work to uncover the 'circumstances that led to the events in Sweida," investigate attacks and refer those implicated in them to the judiciary, state-run news agency SANA reported. The committee is to submit a final report within three months. A similar committee was formed in March, when sectarian violence on Syria's coast killed hundreds of civilians from the Alawite religious minority, also a Shiite offshoot.