New Delhi, Aug. 2 -- 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 ...