US says ‘specific steps’ agreed to end Syria violence after Israeli strikes hit Damascus

The Israeli army struck the Syrian Ministry of Defense in Damascus and government forces in southern Syria on Wednesday, with the continued sectarian fighting in the province of Suwaida mostly for the fourth day.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said its forces “are working to save our Druze brothers and eliminate the regime’s gangs.” The Syrian Foreign Ministry accused Israel of “treacherous aggression”.

More than 300 people have been reported in Suwaida since Sunday, when clashes erupted between the Druze militias and the Bedouin tribes.

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said he was “very concerned” about violence in the south, but he believes it will end within hours.

“We have agreed on specific steps that would bring this worrying and terrifying situation to end tonight,” he wrote at X on Wednesday evening.

The Syrian Foreign Ministry said that the country “welcomes the efforts made by the American and Arab aspects” to solve the current crisis “in peace.

Israel has not yet commented on the ceasefire.

The Syrian forces began to withdraw from Suwaida, according to the Syrian government news agency SANA.

She says that the army is leaving the city as part of an agreement between the Syrian government and religious leaders in Suwaida, following “the completion of the army’s pursuit of outlaw groups.”

The Israeli army began hitting the Syrian security forces and their weapons on Monday, after they were deployed in the city of Suwaida for the first time since the rebels overthrew the Sunni Islamist Bashar al -Assad in December.

Minority groups, including the Druze – whose religion is considered a branch of Shiite Islam with its unique identity and beliefs – doubts that interim President Ahmed Al -Sharra and his government, despite his pledges to protect them.

Their concerns have increased due to several outbreaks of sectarian violence over the past eight months, including one in May, dozens of people were said to have been killed in clashes between the Druze, the security forces, and Islamic fighters allied in Damascus and Sweden.

In the aftermath of the fighting, the government reached an agreement with the Druze militias to employ the local security forces in the province of Sweden from its ranks.

Netanyahu said he is committed to preventing harm to the Druze in Syria because of their deep relations with those who live in Israel and the height of the Israeli -occupied Golan.

Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz wrote on Wednesday afternoon that “warnings in Damascus” have ended and that the Israeli army “will continue to work strongly in Sweden to destroy the forces that attacked the Druze until they withdraw completely.”

Posted later that “painful strikes have started”, over a video showing It was a television introduction diverted under an office living on the camera, where it hit an Israeli air strike at the near entrance to the Syrian Ministry of Defense In Amayad Square, in the center of Damascus.

Fadi Alaby, the Syrian director in London, who is visiting Damascus, said that he was close when he heard the approach of Israeli fighting aircraft.

“People’s faces were very afraid. Everyone began running [in] Street. Nobody knows where to go. Suddenly the air strike[s] Some of the busiest areas, including the Ministry of Defense, began targeting.

The Israeli army said it also struck a “military target in the” Presidential Palace “area in the capital, as well as armored vehicles loaded with machine guns and weapons on their way to Sweden, and shooting jobs and arms storage facilities in southern Syria.

The Syrian Ministry of Foreign Affairs said that the strikes targeted government institutions and civil facilities in Damascus and Sweden and killed “many innocent civilians.”

“This blatant attack, which is part of a deliberate policy followed by the Israeli entity to prove tensions, spread chaos, and undermine security and stability in Syria, is a flagrant violation of the Charter of United Nations and International Humanitarian Law,”

Meanwhile, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR), a UK -based monitoring group, stated that the humanitarian situation in the city of Suwaida has deteriorated quickly.

She cited sources, saying that there are clashes in several areas of the city and that the tanks attacked the National Hospital, causing panic between dozens of losses from the fighting that is treated there. They also said that there is a severe shortage of water and medical supplies.

Later, the Syrian Ministry of Health said that the government forces entered the hospital and found “dozens of bodies” after “external groups withdrew,” according to the official news agency.

A man named Hosam BBC was told that he was in the center of Suwaida and witnessed civilians with fire from artillery and snipers.

“I lost my neighbor today on the street. One of the snipers shot it. We tried it [get an] ambulance [to take] He told him to the hospital, but we were unable to do so. “

SOHR says more than 300 people have been killed since Sunday in the province of Suwaida.

Among them are 69 Druze fighters and 40 civilians, 27 of whom were killed by brief measures by the Ministry of Interior and the forces of the Ministry of Defense, according to the group.

At least 165 members of the government forces and 18 tribal fighters were killed in Badwin in the clashes, while 10 members of the government forces were killed in Israeli strikes, they say.

The BBC is unable to check the numbers of the SOHR victims.

The fighting between the Badwin tribes and Druze militias in Suwaida is said to have arisen from the kidnapping of a Druze merchant on the highway to Damascus last Friday.

On Sunday, it was said that the armed Druze fighters were surrounded and later took alive in the city of Sweida, which he lives in Badwin. The clashes soon spread in other parts of the province of Suwaida, where the tribesmen launched attacks on the nearby cities and villages.

The Ministry of Interior in Syria later announced that its forces and the Ministry of Defense forces will intervene and impose the matter, saying that “the dangerous escalation comes in the absence of official relevant institutions.”

Earlier this year, the Israeli Prime Minister demanded the abolition of excessive Sweida and two other southern provinces. He said that Israel had seen the Sunni President of President Shara, Harir Al -Sham (HTS), as a threat. HTS is a precedent subsidiary of Al Qaeda base that is still known as a terrorist organization by the United Nations and the United Kingdom, but it is no longer the United States.

The Israeli army has already carried out hundreds of strikes throughout Syria to destroy military assets in the country since the fall of the Assad regime.

Forces to the dedicated buffer zone, which are distributed among the occupied Golan and Syria highlands, were sent, in addition to many neighboring areas and Mount Hermon Summit.