Israel says its fighter jets bombed an area next to the presidential palace in Syria's capital, Damascus, as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed to protect the Druze religious minority following days of deadly sectarian violence,
BBC reports.
Netanyahu said the strike was "clear message to the Syrian regime" that Israel would "not allow the deployment of forces south of Damascus or any threat to the Druze community".
There was no immediate response from the Syrian government.
However, it rejected "foreign intervention" when Israel carried out strikes south of Damascus on Wednesday during clashes between Druze gunmen, security forces and allied Sunni Islamist fighters.
The spiritual leader of Syria's Druze, Sheikh Hikmat al-Hijri, has condemned the violence as an "unjustifiable genocidal campaign" against his community and called for intervention by "international forces to maintain peace".
The Syrian government has said it has deployed security forces to Druze areas to combat "outlaw groups" which it has accused of instigating the clashes.
Foreign Minister Asaad al-Shaibani has also warned that "any call for external intervention, under any pretext or slogan, only leads to further deterioration and division".
According to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR), a UK-based monitoring group, at least 102 people have been killed this week in Ashrafiyat Sahnaya, a town in the southern outskirts of Damascus, the mainly Druze suburb of Jaramana, and the southern province of Suweida, which has a Druze majority.
It says that includes 10 Druze civilians and 21 Druze fighters, as well as another 35 Druze fighters who were shot dead in an "ambush" by security forces while travelling from Suweida to Damascus on Wednesday. Thirty members of the General Security service and allied fighters have also been killed, it says.
