Syria's government misread how Israel would respond to its troops deploying to the country's south this week, encouraged by U.S. messaging that Syria should be governed as a centralized state, eight sources familiar with the matter told Reuters.

Sharaa has called on the Sunni Bedouin tribes to fully adhere to the ceasefire, aimed at halting deadly confrontations with Druze-affiliated militias that have claimed hundreds of lives and put the country’s fragile post-conflict transition at risk.

The conflict drew airstrikes against Syrian forces by neighboring Israel in defense of the Druze minority before most of the fighting was halted by a truce announced Wednesday.

In the last barely-functional hospital in Sweida, bodies are overflowing from the morgue, staff said, amid violence that has wracked the Druze-majority southern Syrian city for nearly a week."There's no more space in the morgue,

Bloodshed in Sweida left at least 321 people dead, the Syrian Network for Human Rights said on Friday, in a new toll.

The Israeli army continued to build a concrete wall on Friday to enforce the fence area separating the Israeli-controlled Golan Heights from Syria.

A ceasefire went into effect late Wednesday, easing days of brutal clashes in Sweida. Now, members of its Druze community who fled or went into hiding are returning to search for loved ones and count their losses. They are finding homes looted and bloodied bodies of civilians in the streets.