Israel launched rare strikes in Damascus on Wednesday in a campaign it said was aimed at defending the Druze community after days of clashes in the southern city of Sweida.

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.

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

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.

Syrian security forces are preparing to redeploy to the Druze-majority Sweida city to quell fighting with Bedouin tribes, a Syrian interior ministry spokesperson said on Friday, further straining a fragile truce in Syria's south.