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.

Sky's special correspondent Alex Crawford travelled on the road to the embattled Sweida province in Syria as armed groups clashes continue.

The UN Human Rights Office in Geneva reported on Friday that fresh clashes had broken out in the Syrian province of Sweida, and that it had received "credible" reports of human rights violations. Some groups were deliberately trying to incite further violence with disinformation,

Israel and Syria have agreed to a ceasefire, the U.S. envoy to Turkey said on Friday, after days of bloodshed in the predominantly Druze area that has killed over 300 people.

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

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.