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.

Israel threatened to escalate attacks on Syrian government forces unless they withdraw from the southern province of Sweida, which is dominated by the country’s Druse minority.

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.

The Israel Defense Forces said it struck "the entrance" of Syria's military headquarters in Damascus on Wednesday.

The Israel Defense Forces on Wednesday attacked the entrance to the Syrian regime’s military headquarters in the Damascus area in response to reports of atrocities against local Druze residents.

Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz vowed to inflict "painful blows" to the new Syrian government to protect the Druze community in the country

Lebanon’s Druze leader and former Progressive Socialist Party chief Walid Jumblat told Syria’s state TV on Wednesday that “Israel is not protecting the Druze in (the unrest-hit Syrian city of Sweida),

After a number of strategic aerial attacks on Syrian soil, Israel won't send ground forces to protect Syrian-Druze.

Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz said after the airstrike in a post on X that the “painful blows have begun.”