SYRIAN authorities said yesterday that they had arrested a rebel Nusra Front member over two deadly car bombings that killed a Druze leader in southern Syria.

Western sources had previously claimed that members Syria’s Druze community had rioted, blaming the the government of President Bashar al-Assad for the attack.

Sheikh Wahid Balous and 25 others were killed on Friday in a pair of car bombings in Sweida near the Jordanian border, one of which struck the city’s National Hospital.

The Syrian government called the blasts “cowardly terrorist acts.”

The Coventry-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights and other activist groups claimed rioters holding the government responsible for the Mr Balous’s death destroyed the statue of late Syrian president Hafez al-Assad and besieged security offices.

The Observatory said that six security personnel and five rioters were killed in clashes.

But local police commander Mohammed Samra insisted Sweida was “calm and stable,” saying reports of anti-government violence were aimed at undermining security in the area.

While Mr Balous had reportedly been opposed to Isis trying to overthrow the government, he was also a supporter of rebel groups and had called on young people to refuse to join the military and fight the extremist group.

Senior community leaders appealed for calm, warning against attempts to drag the province toward violence.

In neighbouring Lebanon, Druze political leader Walid Jumblatt used the incident as a pretext to call for a renewed offensive against Damascus.

But Lebanese Communist Party cadres — including Sunni, Shia and Druze Lebanese — have joined Hezbollah guerillas fighting Isis and the Nusra Front in the Beqaa Valley along the mountainous border with Syria.

In Washington, the State Department issued a statement after US Secretary of State John Kerry called Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov to express concern over unconfirmed reports by Israel’s Ynet News “suggesting an imminent enhanced Russian military build-up” in Syria.

Moscow, which supplies Syria with arms and training, has criticised US-led bombing against Isis as ineffective and counter-productive.