Syria, Druze Leaders Try Again for Ceasefire

Syrian government officials and leaders in the Druze religious minority announced a renewed ceasefire Wednesday—after days of clashes that have threatened to unravel the country's postwar political transition and drawn military intervention by powerful neighbor Israel. It was not immediately clear if the agreement, announced by Syria's Interior Ministry and by a Druze religious leader in a video message, would hold. A previous ceasefire announced Tuesday quickly fell apart, and a prominent Druze leader, Sheikh Hikmat Al-Hijri, disavowed the new agreement, the AP reports.

• Israeli strikes: Israel has launched dozens of strikes targeting government troops and convoys heading into Sweida, and on Wednesday struck the Syrian Defense Ministry headquarters next to a busy square in Damascus that became a gathering point after Assad's fall. That strike, which took place after the ceasefire announcement, killed three people and injured 34, Syrian officials said. Another Israeli strike hit near the presidential palace in the hills outside Damascus. Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz said after the initial Damascus airstrike in a post on X that the "painful blows have begun."
• Escalation threat: Israel has taken an aggressive stance toward Syria's new leaders, saying it doesn't want Islamist militants near its borders. Israeli forces have seized a UN-patrolled buffer zone on Syrian territory along the border with the Golan Heights and launched hundreds of airstrikes on military sites in Syria. Katz said in a statement that the Israeli army "will continue to attack regime forces until they withdraw from the area—and will also soon raise the bar of responses against the regime if the message is not understood." Syria's Defense Ministry had earlier blamed militias in the Druze-majority area of Sweida for violating the ceasefire agreement reached Tuesday.

• Druze fears: Reports of attacks on civilians continued to surface, and Druze with family members in the conflict zone searched for information about their fate amid communication blackouts. In Jaramana near the Syrian capital, Evelyn Azzam, 20, said she feared that her husband, Robert Kiwan, 23, was dead. The newlyweds live in the Damascus suburb, but Kiwan would commute to Sweida for work and was trapped there when the clashes erupted. Azzam said she was on the phone with Kiwan when security forces questioned him and a colleague about whether they were affiliated with Druze militias. When her husband's colleague raised his voice, she heard a gunshot. Kiwan was then shot while trying to appeal. The last she knew, he was taken to a hospital.
• US response: The violence appeared to be the most serious threat yet to efforts by Syria's new rulers to consolidate control of the country after a rebel offensive led by Islamist insurgent groups ousted longtime despotic leader Bashar Assad in December, ending a nearly 14-year civil war. US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Wednesday that the Trump administration is "very concerned" about the Israel-Syria violence, which he attributed to a "misunderstanding," and that he has been in touch with both sides in an effort to restore calm.