17 fighters killed in south Syria clashes

BEIRUT: 17 gunmen were killed in two days of clashes in southern Syria’s Sweida province between groups loyal to the Damascus regime and others opposing it, a war monitor said on Wednesday.

Ten loyalists and seven opposition fighters died in fighting on Tuesday and Wednesday in two villages in the Druze-majority province, the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said, raising the toll from 10 a day earlier.

The monitor said more than 40 were wounded, including civilians. The Druze, who made up less than three percent of Syria’s pre-war population, have largely kept out of the country’s civil war since it started in 2011.