The UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) has said the death toll from violence in the country’s south had topped 1,000. The war monitor said those killed since last Sunday included 336 Druze fighters and 298 civilians from the religious minority group, 194 of whom were “summarily executed by defense and interior ministry personnel.”

Sectarian violence erupted again in southern Syria as local Sunni Bedouin tribes fought armed factions for the Druze religious community. The Syrian government dispatched troops to restore order, and Israel launched airstrikes to protect the Druze.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a U.K.-based war monitor, said the clashes started after members of a Bedouin tribe in Sweida province set up a checkpoint where they attacked and robbed a Druze man, leading to tit-for-tat attacks and kidnappings between the tribes and Druze armed groups.

One day after reaching a ceasefire with Israel, Syrian military forces began moving into the country's Suwayda Governorate, where dozens of people have been killed in recent days amid fighting between warring tribes.

Violence between government forces and armed factions of a religious minority in southern Syria this week has deepened divisions in a country still recuperating from a civil war

At least 18 members of Syria's security forces have been killed in the predominantly Druze city of Sweida, the Defence Ministry said, after they deployed to quell deadly sectarian clashes that had resumed on Monday,

Once again, images of horrifying violence are pouring out of Syria: dead bodies piled up in a hospital corridor. Gunmen calling out insults as they drive their cars over the corpses of murdered civilians.