After violence in Syria, Israel says it is prepared to defend Syria's Druze

Israel said on Monday that it was willing to defend Syria's Druze community following days of violence in Syria that a war monitor said led to mass killings of another religious minority.

The violence began last week between fighters linked to Syria's new government and forces loyal to ousted president Bashar al-Assad.

Speaking to reporters, Israeli government spokesperson David Mencer described the violence as a "massacre of civilians" and said that Israel was "prepared, if needed, to defend the Druze", without giving details how.

The Druze are Arabs who practise a religion widely considered as an offshoot of Islam. There are minority Druze communities in Israel, Syria and Lebanon.

Syria's Islamist-led government on Monday said it had completed a military operation against a nascent insurgency. The violence had been centred around coastal provinces where most of Syria's Alawite minority live.

Assad is an Alawite, an offshoot of Shi'ite Islam, whose family for decades ruled over the Sunni Muslim majority.

British-based war monitoring group the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights has said that 973 civilians were killed by government forces and allied fighters in reprisal killings. More than 250 Alawite fighters were killed and more than 230 members of government security forces were also killed, the group said.

Reuters has not independently verified the tolls.

Israel has a small Druze community and there are also some 24,000 Druze living in the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights, which Israel captured from Syria in the 1967 Six-Day war.

Israel annexed the territory in 1981, a move that has not been recognised by most countries or the United Nations.

Many Syrian Druze have family in the Golan Heights. Israel on Sunday announced it would allow Syrian Druze to work there.

Israel announced on March 1 that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defence Minister Israel Katz had instructed the military to be ready to defend a Druze town in the suburbs of Damascus from Syrian government forces.