Dr Talat Amer, a surgeon at Sweida National Hospital in southern Syria, worked tirelessly for three days as bombs fell and the building came under siege from government and militia forces.

At the center of a crisis in Syria are the Druze — a secretive religious minority that long carved out a precarious identity across Syria, Lebanon and Israel.

Badly needed humanitarian supplies started to reach Syria's Druze-majority Sweida province on Sunday, a day after a ceasefire was announced following a week of sectarian fighting that left hundreds dead,

Syrian government forces had largely pulled out of the Druze-majority southern province of Sweida after days of clashes with militias linked to the Druze religious minority that threatened to unravel the country’s fragile post-war transition.

As a fragile ceasefire holds in southern Syria following deadly clashes, a Syrian Druze writer in exile Sarah Hunaidi tells CNN it’s a “horrible situation” on the ground, as food supplies run low and hospitals remain out of service.

More than 100 demonstrators from Canada's Druze community gathered on Parliament Hill on Friday afternoon, asking for the government to intervene in an unfolding humanitarian crisis in Syria where hundreds have already been killed.

The Druze religious sect, enmeshed in an outbreak of tit-for-tat violence in Syria, began roughly 1,000 years ago as an offshoot of Ismailism, a branch of Shiite Islam.