US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Wednesday that Washington hoped within hours to ease tensions in Syria, as the European Union, United Nations and regional powers called on Israel to cease its strikes on government targets and regime loyalists clashing with Syrian Druze.

“In the next few hours, we hope to see some real progress to end what you’ve been seeing over the last couple of hours,” Rubio told reporters in the Oval Office as US President Donald Trump nodded.

Trump and Israel have sought to normalize relations agreements between Israel and the regime of interim Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa, head of the former al-Qaeda affiliate that toppled long-time Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad in December.

The violence in Sweida, a majority-Druze city in Syria’s south, appeared to throw a wrench in the normalization efforts, as the IDF struck targets including the Syrian army headquarters and presidential palace in what Israel said was a warning to leave the Druze alone.

Speaking at the White House, Rubio blamed “historic longtime rivalries” for the clashes in Sweida.

“It led to an unfortunate situation and a misunderstanding, it looks like, between the Israeli side and the Syrian side,” said Rubio, who is also Trump’s national security advisor.

“We’ve been engaged with them all morning long and all night long — with both sides — and we think we’re on our way toward a real deescalation and then hopefully get back on track and helping Syria build the country and arriving at a situation in the Middle East that is far more stable,” he said.

US State Department spokeswoman Tammy Bruce said that the United States was asking Syrian government forces to pull out of the flashpoint area.

“We are calling on the Syrian government to, in fact, withdraw their military in order to enable all sides to de-escalate and find a path forward,” she told reporters, without specifying the exact area.

According to a US official cited by the Axios news site, the Trump administration asked Israel on Wednesday to halt its strikes and engage in dialogue with Damascus. It was the second such request in as many days, with Monday’s apparently having fallen on deaf ears.

However, Bruce declined to comment on whether the United States wanted Israel to stop its strikes.

Rubio, asked by a reporter earlier in the day at the State Department what he thought of Israel’s bombing, said, “We’re very concerned about it. We want it to stop.”

The US State Department afterward issued fuller comments in which Rubio did not directly reference Israel but spoke of the communal clashes in Syria.

“We are very worried about the violence in southern Syria. It is a direct threat to efforts to help build a peaceful and stable Syria,” Rubio said in a statement.

“We have been and remain in repeated and constant talks with the governments of Syria and Israel on this matter.”

Syrian government forces entered Sweida on Tuesday with the stated aim of overseeing a ceasefire agreed on with Druze community leaders after clashes with local Bedouin tribes left more than 100 people dead.

However, witnesses reported that the government forces joined with the Bedouins in attacking Druze fighters and civilians in a bloody rampage through the city.

In total, there were some 300 dead as of Wednesday afternoon, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a London-based war monitor.

Amid the violence, the IDF said it struck over 160 targets in Syria, mostly in the area of Sweida, including government tanks and machine guns headed there. The military also said it was bolstering forces in the Golan Heights, on the Syrian border, in preparation for days of potential conflict.

Meanwhile, hundreds of Druze rushed across the border from Israel on Wednesday, vowing to protect their community in Syria. The IDF said the number of Israeli civilians in Syria was roughly 1,000 and that troops were working to bring them back.

UN chief Antonio Guterres was “alarmed by the continued escalation of violence” in the majority-Druze area, and condemned “Israel’s escalatory airstrikes… as well as reports of the IDF’s redeployment of forces in the Golan,” according to a statement by UN spokesperson Stephane Dujarric.

Guterres “takes note” of Sharaa’s statement saying Syria would probe the violence and hold those responsible to account, Dujarric said, adding that the UN chief “reiterates his appeal for the transparency of the process.”

In addition, said Dujarric, Guterres “calls for an immediate cessation of all violations of Syria’s sovereignty and territorial integrity and for respect for the 1974 Disengagement of Forces Agreement.”

Israel has since Assad’s ouster seized the Syrian side of the buffer zone delineated by the agreement, citing fear that the region would fall into the wrong hands and arguing that the deal was void because there was no Syrian government to enforce it.

The European Union also called on Israel to immediately halt its strikes on Syrian government targets and said Syria must calm ethnic conflict.

“We urge Israel to immediately cease its strikes on Syrian territory, including on key institutions in Damascus, which jeopardize the lives of civilians and risk undermining Syria’s transition,” EU spokesperson Anouar El Anouni told AFP.

“We also call on Syria’s transitional authorities to de-escalate the situation in Sweida, which has already resulted in a high number of casualties,” he added.

Turkey, which offered material support to the rebel forces that toppled Assad, said Israel’s strikes on regime targets aim to sabotage Syria’s efforts to establish peace and security, the Turkish foreign ministry said in a statement Wednesday.

Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan told state media that Ankara had conveyed its views to Israeli authorities via its intelligence agency and was in close contact with regional powers and the US.

Speaking in New York, Fidan said he was in close contact with Tom Barrack, the US Special Envoy for Syria and the U.S. ambassador to Turkey, and had discussed the issue in phone calls with his Syrian, Jordanian, and Saudi Arabian counterparts.

“At the same time, we have conveyed our own views on the matter to the Israelis via our intelligence agency, that we do not want an instability here,” Fidan said, and added Syria’s new government could not solve the conflict without measures to ensure security in the region.

Iran, an ally of the former Assad regime, slammed Israel’s “unhinged” attacks on Syria.

“The rabid Israeli regime knows no bounds and only grasps one language. The world, including the region, must unite to end its unhinged aggression,” wrote Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi on X. “Iran supports the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Syria, and will always stand with the Syrian people.”

The United Arab Emirates, with which Israel has a peace agreement, condemned the Israeli attacks, saying it fully rejects any violation of Syria’s sovereignty, the country’s foreign ministry said.