SWEIDA - In the last barely-functional hospital in Sweida, bodies are overflowing from the morgue, staff said, amid violence that has wracked the Druze-majority southern Syrian city for nearly a week.

“It’s not a hospital anymore, it’s a mass grave,” said Ms Rouba, a member of the medical staff at the city’s sole government hospital, weeping as she appealed for aid.

Dr Omar Obeid, who heads the Sweida division at Syria’s Order of Physicians, said the facility has received “more than 400 bodies since Monday morning”, including women, children and the elderly.

“There’s no more space in the morgue, the bodies are out on the street” in front of the hospital, he continued.

Fighting erupted on the night of July 13

between Druze fighters and local Bedouin tribes

But in the subsequent events, those government forces were accused of grave abuses against the minority, according to rights organisations, witnesses and Druze groups.

The government forces withdrew from the city on July 17 following threats from Israel, which has vowed to protect the Druze.

In the hospital on July 18, corridors were engulfed by the stench of the dead bodies, which had bloated beyond recognition, an AFP correspondent said.

Visibly overwhelmed, the handful of medical personnel remaining at the facility nonetheless rushed to do their best to offer care to the seemingly endless stream of wounded, many of them waiting in the hallways.

“There are only nine doctors and medical staff left, and they are working nonstop,” said Ms Rouba, who preferred not to give her ...