Syria’s president declared a ceasefire after nearly a week of sectarian bloodshed in the south, but civilians said there was no let-up in the violence.

Syrian security forces are deploying in the restive province of Suwayda after days of communal fighting in which hundreds of people have been killed, the country’s interior ministry says.

Suwayda, the Druze community is facing what its members have described as an "ethnic cleansing campaign" amidst a rapidly deteriorating security situation that has claimed the lives of hundreds over the past week.

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.

Mr. Funk was the managing editor of Pleroma Media, and worked as a breaking news reporter at The Messenger after spending 25 years at Fox Television as a producer, executive producer, and digital content director.

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.

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

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.

As alarming sectarian violence swept through Syria in the third week of July, Christian communities in the region experienced a new wave of persecution. Attacks on the country's Christian, Druze and Alawite communities were perpetrated mainly by Islamist jihadists.

Amid violent clashes in southern Syria’s Sweida governorate, a picture of grave human rights abuses and rising humanitarian needs is emerging by the hour, the UN said on Friday.