After a week of violence that killed hundreds of people, the Syrian government reported that clashes in the southern city of Suwayda have stopped.

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.

Syria's Druze have reached a ceasefire agreement with the Syrian government in Sweida that will take immediate effect, Druze religious leader Sheikh Yousef Jarbou said in a video broadcast by state media on Wednesday.