Violent clashes between pro-government fighters and Druse Militia around the capital of Syria, Damascus, spread on Wednesday and attracted the military of Israel in the fray, leaving at least 11 dead people, according to the Syrian authorities and a war monitor.
The total mortal balance for two days of disorders went up to at least 28 after the last burst of battles with firearms.
The Israeli army declared that he had made a warning attack on the outskirts of Damascus against what he called “extremists” who are preparing to attack the members of the religious minority of Druse, according to a joint declaration by the office of the Israeli Prime Minister and the Minister of Defense.
The Israel government has close relations with the community of Druse in Israel and offered to protect Druse in Syria if they had attacked in the midst of a tumultuous transition of power. The Syrian authorities did not make immediate comments on the Israeli attack.
The last fight spread during the night from Tuesday to Wednesday to the city of Ashrafieh Sahnaya, a city in most of druses south of Damascus, when armed armed men attacked checkpoints and vehicles belonging to government forces, according to the Syrian state press agency, healthy.
This is followed by clashes the day before in Jaramana, another city on the southern suburbs of Damascus which also hosts a large number of druses.
Ashrafieh Sahnaya's violence on Wednesday saw Druse's local militia fight the pro-government fighters, according to the War Monitor, the Syrian observatory for human rights, which is based in Great Britain.
An official of the Ministry of the Syrian interiors called the armed men who attacked the government forces on Wednesday “criminals” and said that the government would “hit with an iron fist”, according to Sana.
This week's fights broke out after an audio clip circulated on social media that claimed to be of a cleric druse that insults the prophet Muhammad. The cleric denied the accusation and the Ministry of the Interior of Syria said that its initial results showed that it was not the person in the clip.
However, the appeals for the calm by the Syrian government have done very little to stem the anger, with protests that broke out in different cities. Many of the events have taken on a sectarian tone with some demonstrators asking violence against druse, according to the Syrian observatory for human rights.
Syria is a mainly Sunni Muslim nation, while druses are a religious group that practices a deliberately mysterious branch of Islam. The rebels who led the reversal of the former dictator Bashar al-Assad belonged to a Sunni Islamist group who was once connected to Al Qaeda. Now they manage the government and national military.
Many Syrian druses rejected any offer from Israel to come to their defense. Some druse crossed the border last month on a religious pilgrimage in Israel for the first time for years.
Since Mr. Al-Assad was expelled, Israel has carried out numerous raids in Syria, breaking into the villages, launching hundreds of air attacks and destroying military outposts. Israel says that he wants to prevent weapons from falling into the hands of hostile groups and that he does not want enemy forces to combine in the areas near his borders.
The new leaders of Syria have fought to integrate the complex network of armed groups operating across the country in the new state apparatus. Many of the strongest druse militias are in negotiations with the government on their conditions for integration into the army.
After the violence in Jaramana, the Syrian officials met on Tuesday with religious figures of druses and leaders of the local community in an attempt to restore calm. They agreed to make the people involved in the attack responsible, according to Sana.
On Wednesday Jaramana was mostly quiet, but some residents had fled the chaos, according to the Syrian observatory for human rights.
Seventy violence has affected Syria several times from the expulsion of Mr. Assad, fueling the fears between many minority groups that the new leaders of the country will marginalize or even target.
Last month, a wave of sectarian violence broke out in the coastal region of Syria, home to the country's Alawites, the minority group to which the Assad family belongs. Violence began with Assad's loyalists who launched a coordinated attack on the forces of the new government in the area.
Thousands of pro-government fighters therefore stormed the coastal region and killed over 1,600 civilians, mainly Alawiti, in a few days, according to the human rights observatory.
Aaron Boxerman Reports contributed by Jerusalem.