Ramzi has witnessed horrors throughout his career as a doctor during Syria’s 13-year civil war. But few compare, he said, to the scenes he witnessed this week at the main hospital in Sweida, a Druze-majority town where bloody sectarian violence raged for days.

Hundreds of Druze from Israel pushed across the border in solidarity with their Syrian cousins they feared were under attack. Many then met relatives never seen before.

Shops were looted, homes burned and bodies littered the streets of the city. Read more at straitstimes.com. Read more at straitstimes.com.

Syria announced that its army had begun to withdraw from violence-hit Sweida on Wednesday, following a wave of Israeli strikes on the capital and a US call for government forces to leave the majority-Druze southern city.

SANA says women and children among those killed by armed groups following withdrawal of government forces in Sweida

Israel bombed the Syrian army headquarters in Damascus on Wednesday after warning the Islamist-led government to leave the Druze minority alone in its Sweida heartland, where a war monitor says sectarian clashes have killed nearly 250 people.

Israeli officials react to the ongoing violence in Syria's Sweida between regime forces and the local Druze community.