Scores of people have been killed in Syria's southern governorate of Suwayda after clashes began between local Sunni Bedouin tribes and Druze armed factions. A ceasefire agreement was announced Wednesday after neighbouring Israel launched strikes on Syrian military forces,

One elderly man had been shot in the head in his living room. Another in his bedroom. The body of a woman lay in the street. After days of bloodshed in Syria's Druze city of Sweida, survivors emerged on Thursday to collect and bury the scores of dead found across the city.

Violence in Syria's Druze province has triggered Israeli military action, complicating relations with Turkey and creating a power vacuum that Iran could exploit.

Members of Syria's Druze community are searching for loved ones and counting their dead after days of clashes in a southern province that left bloodied bodies of civilians on the streets and homes looted.

In the last barely-functional hospital in Sweida, bodies are overflowing from the morgue, staff said, amid violence that has wracked the Druze-majority southern Syrian city for nearly a week."It's not a hospital anymore,

STORY: Violence in southern Syria has put a spotlight on a small but influential minority, the Druze.:: Who are the Druze?The Druze are Arabs who follow a religion derived from a branch of Islam.They maintain a degree of secrecy about the practice of their faith that emerged in the 11th century.

Israel has threatened to increase its involvement in Syria and vowed to protect the Druze religious minority, which began as a 10th-century offshoot of Ismailism, a branch of Shiite Islam, the Associated Press reported. Most of the world’s Druze population lives in Syria, with the rest predominantly in Israel and Lebanon.

Syria's Druze are concentrated in the southwest in the Sweida region bordering Jordan and in areas of Quneitra province, near the occupied Golan. They also reside in the Damascus