Clashes that shook southern Syria this week have killed hundreds of people, including civilians, and drawn in an array of both local and international players, harking back to the dynamics of the country’s nearly 14-year civil war.

More than 100 demonstrators from Canada's Druze community gathered on Parliament Hill on Friday afternoon, asking for the government to intervene in an unfolding humanitarian crisis in Syria where hundreds have already been killed.

Syrian security forces are deploying in the restive province of Suwayda after days of communal fighting in which hundreds of people have been killed, the country’s interior ministry says.

Syria’s interim President Ahmad al-Sharaa has urged Sunni Bedouin tribes to honor a ceasefire aimed at ending deadly clashes with Druze-linked militias.

Video showed government forces on the streets of a predominantly Druze city and smoke billowing across roads as gunfire sounded.

As alarming sectarian violence swept through Syria in the third week of July, Christian communities in the region experienced a new wave of persecution. Attacks on the country's Christian, Druze and Alawite communities were perpetrated mainly by Islamist jihadists.

A Syrian Druze woman living in the United Arab Emirates frantically tried to keep in touch with her family in her hometown in southern Syria as clashes raged there over the past days. Her mother, father and sister sent videos of their neighbors fleeing as fighters moved in.

After days of bloodshed in Syria's Druze city of Sweida, survivors emerged to collect and bury the scores of dead found across the city.