Israel strikes near Syria's presidential palace after warning Syrian authorities over sectarian attacks

Syria's security forces deployed at a highway where they found bodies Syrian Druze fighters. (AP photo)

Israel’s air force struck near Syria’s presidential palace early Friday hours after warning Syrian authorities not to march toward villages inhabited by members of a minority sect in southern Syria.

The strike came after days of clashes between pro-Syrian government gunmen and fighters who belong to the Druze minority sect near the capital, Damascus. The clashes left dozens of people dead or wounded.

The Israeli army said in a statement that fighter jets struck adjacent to the area of the Palace of President Hussein al-Sharaa in Damascus. It gave no further details.

Pro-government Syrian media outlets said the strike hit close to the People’s Palace on a hill overlooking the city.

The Druze religious sect is a minority group that began as a 10th-century offshoot of Ismailism, a branch of Shiite Islam. More than half of the roughly 1 million Druze worldwide live in Syria. Most of the other Druze live in Lebanon and Israel, including in the Golan Heights, which Israel captured from Syria in the 1967 Mideast War and annexed in 1981. In Syria, they largely live in the southern Sweida province and some suburbs of Damascus.