By Laila Bassam DAMASCUS (Reuters) -Sectarian clashes escalated in Syria's predominantly Druze region of Sweida on Saturday, with machinegun fire and mortar shelling ringing out after days of bloodshed as the Islamist-led government struggled to implement a ceasefire.

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.

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.

Hundreds of Druze from Israel pushed across the border in solidarity with their Syrian cousins they feared were under attack. Many then met relatives they had never seen before.

Members of Syria's Druze community are searching for loved ones and counting their dead after days of clashes in a southern province that left bloodied bodies of civilians on the streets and homes looted.

Syria's Druze are concentrated in the southwest in the Sweida region bordering Jordan and in areas of Quneitra province, near the occupied Golan. They also reside in the Damascus

Syria's Islamist-led government struggled to implement a ceasefire in the predominantly Druze region of Sweida on Saturday, with machinegun fire and mortar shelling ringing out after days of bloodshed.

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.

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.

Syria should not be allowed back into the international community unless it is able to uphold protections for the Druze and its other minority groups, Israel has said.

Syria's Islamist-led government said its security forces were deploying in the predominantly Druze southern city of Sweida on Saturday and urged all parties to respect a ceasefire after days of factional bloodshed in which hundreds have been killed.