Only last week, Ahmed al-Sharaa was in Cairo helping to devise a viable alternative to Donald Trump’s vision for Gaza.

Dressed in a smart Western suit, Syria’s interim president was welcomed as an equal by some of the most important political leaders of the Arab world.

It marked an extraordinary rise for the former Islamist militant who so brilliantly defeated Assad in December.

Since then he has opened up Damascus to Western leaders and journalists to sell his vision of a new stable and inclusive Syria.

Those hopes now teeter on the edge of ruin, given the bloodletting of minorities in the country’s Mediterranean west coast since Thursday.

Sharaa’s government now stands accused of massacring members of minority groups – Alawites, Christians and Druze – in response to a series of ambushes by gunmen apparently loyal to the former regime of Bashar al-Assad.

Approximately 750 civilians have been killed, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a London-based war monitor.