Sectarian Clashes Spread Around Syria’s Capital, Drawing In Israel

Israel launched airstrikes on Syria on Wednesday and threatened to strike government forces there if clashes persist with fighters from the country’s Druse minority.

Wading into the latest eruption of sectarian violence in the country, the Israeli military said its aircraft had struck a group of “operatives” south of Damascus and accused them of having “attacked Druse civilians.” It did not identify the operatives.

Earlier, the Israeli government said its forces had targeted members of an unidentified “extremist group” south of Damascus. Israel is home to a substantial Druse community, many of whom see themselves as loyal citizens and serve in the military.

At least 39 people — 22 of them on Wednesday — have been killed in two days of clashes between Syrians on the outskirts of Damascus, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a war monitoring group based in Britain.

The Israeli airstrikes on Wednesday came after violent clashes broke out between pro-government fighters and Druse militiamen from near the town of Ashrafieh Sahnaya, a largely Druse area south of Damascus.

The attacks on areas around Damascus with large Druse populations began overnight from Monday to Tuesday after an audio clip circulated on social media purporting to be a Druse cleric insulting the Prophet Muhammad. The cleric denied the accusation, and Syria’s Interior Ministry said that its initial findings showed that he was not the person in the clip.

The violence is stoking fears among Syria’s many diverse ethnic and religious minorities, who have grown increasingly worried about persecution under the rule of Syria’s new Islamist leadership who overthrew the dictator Bashar al-Assad in December.

The clashes began in the predominantly Druse city of Jaramana. By the end of the day Tuesday, 17 people were dead.

The unrest spread overnight into Wednesday to Ashrafieh Sahnaya, where Druse militia fighters battled “forces affiliated to the ministries of defense and interior and other proxy forces,” of the government, according to the Observatory war monitoring group.

The Syrian state news agency, SANA, said armed gunmen attacked checkpoints and vehicles belonging to government forces in Ashrafieh Sahnaya. The agency did not say who the armed gunmen were, but it was apparently making a reference to the Druse fighters.

A Syrian Interior Ministry official called the gunmen who attacked government forces “criminals” and said that the government would strike back “with an iron fist,” according to SANA.

Israel’s first airstrike on Wednesday was described as a warning against what it called “an extremist group” said to be preparing to attack members of the Druse religious minority, according to a joint statement by the Israeli prime minister’s office and the defense minister.

Israel has offered to protect the Druse in Syria should they come under attack amid the tumultuous transition of power in the country recently.

Many Syrian Druse have rejected that offer.

Syria is a predominantly Sunni Muslim nation, while the Druse are a religious group that practices a secretive religion rooted in Islam. The rebels who led the overthrow of the former dictator Bashar al-Assad belonged to a Sunni Islamist group that was once linked to Al Qaeda. They now run the government and the national military.

Since Mr. al-Assad was ousted, Israel has carried out numerous incursions in Syria, raiding villages, launching hundreds of airstrikes and destroying military outposts. Israel says that it wants to prevent weapons from falling into the hands of hostile groups and that it does not want enemy forces to entrench themselves in areas near its borders.

Syria’s new leaders have wrestled to integrate the complex web of armed groups operating across the country into the new state apparatus. Several of the strongest Druse militias are in talks with the government about their conditions for integrating into the army.

Sectarian violence has hit Syria several times since the ouster of Mr. Assad, stoking fears among many minority groups that the country’s new leaders will marginalize or even target them.

Last month, a wave of sectarian killings spread across Syria’s coastal region, home of the country’s Alawites, the minority group that the Assad family belongs to.