This is Beirut, 2024-12-26 11:15 - Reading : 3 minute(s)
In post-Assad Syria, stand-up comedians are re-emerging to challenge taboos, mocking the former president and his regime and even testing the waters with Damascus's new rulers. Melki Mardini, a performer in the Syrian capital's stand-up scene, is among those embracing newfound freedoms. "The regime has fallen," he declares from the stage, ...
This is Beirut, 2024-12-25 22:57 - Reading : 4 minute(s)
Syria Syria Military Operations Administration Alawites
A Syria war monitor said nine people were killed Wednesday in clashes in Tartus province after security forces sought to arrest an officer under deposed leader Bashar al-Assad who was linked to a notorious prison. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) said "six members of the General Security force" of Syria's new ...
This is Beirut, 2024-12-25 16:45 - Reading : 2 minute(s)
A key Syrian rescue group and an activist told AFP on Wednesday a burial site outside Damascus was likely a mass grave for detainees held under former president Bashar al-Assad and fighters killed in the civil war. In a vast walled area located near the Baghdad Bridge, some 35 kilometres (22 miles) from the capital, AFP journalists visiting the ...
This is Beirut, 2024-12-25 14:35 - Reading : 2 minute(s)
Damascus Saudi Arabia Syria captagon
Syria's new authorities torched a large stockpile of drugs on Wednesday, two security officials told AFP, including one million pills of captagon, whose industrial-scale production flourished under ousted president Bashar al-Assad. Captagon is a banned amphetamine-like stimulant that became Syria's largest export during the country's more than ...
This is Beirut, 2024-12-24 15:01 - Reading : 1 minute(s)
Syria's new authorities announced Tuesday that they had reached an agreement with the country's rebel groups on their dissolution and integration into the regular defense forces. Photos published by the state-run SANA news agency showed the country's new leader, Ahmed al-Sharaa, surrounded by the heads of several armed factions -- but ...
This is Beirut, 2024-12-24 14:40 - Reading : 1 minute(s)
Qatar syria sanctions Damascus
Qatar called on Tuesday for the quick removal of sanctions on Syria following the ousting of president Bashar al-Assad by Islamist-led rebels. "We call for intensified efforts to expedite the lifting of international sanctions on Syria," foreign ministry spokesperson Majed al-Ansari told a regular briefing. Qatar's call came a day after a ...
This is Beirut, 2024-12-24 13:45 - Reading : 2 minute(s)
Damascus USA Syria Austin Tice NGO
US group Hostage Aid Worldwide said Tuesday that it believes journalist Austin Tice, who went missing in Syria in 2012, is still alive, though it did not offer concrete information on his whereabouts. "We have data that Austin is alive till January 2024, but the president of the US said in August that he is alive, and we are sure that he is alive ...
This is Beirut, 2024-12-24 13:00 - Reading : 1 minute(s)
More than 25,000 Syrians have returned home from Turkey since Bashar al-Assad was overthrown by Islamist-led HTS rebels, Turkey's interior minister said Tuesday. Turkey is home to nearly three million refugees who fled the civil war that broke out in 2011, and whose presence has been an issue for President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's government. "The ...
This is Beirut, 2024-12-23 22:46 - Reading : 2 minute(s)
Syria Bashar al-Assad Human Rights Watch Amnesty International ADMSP
Three rights group on Monday appealed to Syria's new rulers to urgently preserve evidence of atrocities committed under former president Bashar al-Assad. Such evidence -- including government and intelligence documents as well as mass graves -- will be essential for establishing the fate of tens of thousands of people forcibly disappeared, ...
This is Beirut, 2024-12-23 20:55 - Reading : 2 minute(s)
Recep Tayyip Erdogan Turkey Syria
Ensuring the protection of Syria's territorial integrity is an unchanging line for Turkey, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Monday. "Protecting Syria's territorial integrity and unitary structure under all circumstances is Turkey's unchanging line. We never step back from this," he said after remarks warning Israel that it would be "forced" to ...
This is Beirut, 2024-12-23 18:13 - Reading : 3 minute(s)
Two Syrian doctors and a nurse told AFP in a series of interviews over the weekend that Bashar al-Assad's government coerced them into providing false testimony to international investigators after a deadly 2018 chlorine attack. The three, who treated the wounded at a field hospital in the rebel-held town of Douma near Damascus after the ...
David Hale , 2024-12-23 15:05 - Reading : 6 minute(s)
Syria Lebanon USA Donald Trump Iran Turkey
So many Syrians and Lebanese are celebrating the downfall of the Assad regime, whose last decade of rule came courtesy of Russia, Iran, and Hezbollah. The proximate cause of the final collapse is debatable; some attribute it to the inability of Russia to come to Assad's defense, while others cite Israel's decimation of Assad's Hezbollah ...