DAMASCUS, Syria — More than 300 people have been killed in days of violence in southern Syria’s Sweida province, a war monitor says, raising an earlier toll of 248 dead.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights says that since clashes erupted on Sunday, 69 Druze fighters were killed as well as 40 civilians, 27 of them in “summary executions… by members of the defense and interior ministries,” while 165 government forces and 18 Bedouin fighters were also killed, along with 10 members of the government’s security forces in Israeli strikes.
Additionally, Syria’s Health Ministry says a series of Israeli strikes targeting the army and Defense Ministry headquarters in Damascus killed one person and wounded another 18.
AFP correspondents say the strikes destroyed part of a four-story building adjacent to the Defense Ministry, while the city’s usually bustling Umayyad Square nearby was empty except for ambulances and military vehicles.
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