What is happening in Syria – and how is Israel responding?

Over the past several days Syria has seen the worst violence since the fall of the Assad regime in December, with clashes between those loyal to deposed dictator Bashar al-Assad and fighters affiliated with Syria’s new Islamist leaders leaving scores of civilians dead, and many reportedly killed by government forces.

The UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR), which has monitored fighting in Syria since 2011, said on Sunday that over 700 people were killed execution-style on Friday and Saturday in “massacres” targeting civilians from the Alawite religious minority group, mostly by Syrian government forces.

The Syrian Network for Human Rights, another war monitoring group, reported earlier that government security forces had killed roughly 125 civilians, saying that men of all ages were among the casualties and that the forces did not distinguish between civilians and combatants. The death toll numbers could not be independently verified.

The escalation in violence started on Thursday afternoon when Assad loyalists attacked and killed 13 Syrian security forces in the rural Latakia province, a former Assad stronghold and the home of many of Syria’s Alawite minority.