Israel launched rare strikes in Damascus on Wednesday in a campaign it said was aimed at defending the Druze community after days of clashes in the southern city of Sweida.

Lebanon is seeking a treaty that would see most Syrian prisoners serve the rest of their sentence in their homeland in a bid to ease severe overcrowding in Lebanese jails. At Lebanon's largest jail of Roumieh,

Syria border was breached, heartwarming family reunions decades in the making ensued for a number of hours, on both sides of the fence. But the happiness was still tempered by fear over the conflict.

"If Israel feels that a certain leader...is an evident threat to its national security, it will operate," a former Israeli envoy told Newsweek.

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.