Eyewitness video released on Sunday (July 20) appears to show bodies, some of them covered or bagged, on the national hospital grounds in the predominantly Druze city of Sweida, following violence in Syria's southern province.

Armed Bedouin clans have withdrawn from the Druze-majority Syrian city of Sweida after a week of deadly clashes. A U.S.

The Syrian government says clashes in the southern city of Suwayda have stopped after a week of violence left hundreds of people dead, drawing Israeli intervention and US condemnation.

Interim President Ahmed al-Sharaa's government responded by deploying forces to the city. Druze residents of Suweida told the BBC they had witnessed "barbaric acts" as gunmen - government forces and foreign fighters - attacked people. Israel targeted these forces, saying they were acting to protect the Druze.

"If Israel feels that a certain leader...is an evident threat to its national security, it will operate," a former Israeli envoy told Newsweek.

Thousands went missing during Syria’s decades-long intervention in Lebanon. Months after the fall of the Syrian regime, families are still clinging to hope.

Sharaa vowed to protect minority groups including the Druze and the Alawites, who formerly dominated power in Syria. But after almost 15 years of civil war that left the country’s institutions and economy largely wrecked,

When the Syrian civil war erupted in March 2011, Syrian Druze were targeted at times by both the Assad regime, which pressured them to support it, and by Islamist rebel groups that regarded them as infidels. The Druze straddled a fine line throughout the war, seeking, not always successfully, to be left on their own.