Syria said that its army had begun to withdraw from violence-hit Sweida following a wave of Israeli strikes on the capital and a US call for forces to leave.

DAMASCUS — Clashes between Syrian government troops and local Druze fighters resumed in the southern Druze city of Sweida early on Wednesday, wrecking a ceasefire announced just hours earlier that aimed to put an end to days of deadly sectarian bloodshed.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a U.K.-based war monitor, said the clashes started after members of a Bedouin tribe in Sweida province set up a checkpoint where they attacked and robbed a Druze man, leading to tit-for-tat attacks and kidnappings between the tribes and Druze armed groups.

Israeli warplanes pounded Syrian government buildings in Damascus, escalating its campaign against Syria’s new authorities amid heavy clashes between government forces and the country’s Druze minority.

Israeli officials react to the ongoing violence in Syria's Sweida between regime forces and the local Druze community. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu urged Israeli Druze citizens not to cross the border amid ongoing clashes in Sweida in southern Syria on Wednesday afternoon.

As of Wednesday afternoon, the IDF had undertaken 160 aerial attacks on Syrian regime forces in and around the vicinity of Sweida in southern Syria, where Israel says the regime's forces are slaughtering Syrian-Druze.

Clashes have erupted in Sweida, southern Syria, following a ceasefire breakdown between government forces and Druze armed groups. Israel threatens further involvement supporting the Druze minority, executing airstrikes near Damascus.

Dozens of wounded and dead arrived at a hospital in Al-Mazraa in Syria's southern Sweida province on Tuesday following clashes between local militias, clans and government forces.