#syria

#syria

For more than 11 years, I told myself it was too early to grieve. My father, Ali Mustafa, was arrested by Bashar al-Assad's forces in Syria on 2 July 2013 and disappeared. Since that day, we have had no word, no trace, nothing. Every morning since he was taken I made my first thought after waking up: He is alive. Every night I went to sleep repeating it.

For Syria's interim President Ahmad al-Sharaa, this week's speech at the United Nations General Assembly in New York marked a milestone in his career and in the recognition of the country. "Syria is reclaiming its rightful place among the nations of the world," al-Sharaa said in New York. It was the first time a Syrian head of state had attended the United Nations General Assembly, or UNGA, since 1967.

This week at the United Nations General Assembly, Syria's new interim president Ahmad al-Sharaa came with a message: Syria is back after being isolated for about six decades.

The former head of Syria's al-Nusra Front had a $10m bounty on his head for organising multiple terrorist attacks throughout Syria, often targeting civilians. This week, however, after toppling the dictator Bashar al-Assad in a lightning offensive last December, he is being feted in New York as he meets with world leaders in the first visit to the United Nations general assembly by a Syrian head of state since 1967.

Not every Syrian will be going to a voting booth, nor will there be political parties or campaign posters. Instead, votes will be cast by various committees, which is why the country's first election after dictatorship is being described as "indirect." "The reality in Syria does not permit the holding of traditional elections, given the presence of millions of internally and externally displaced persons, the absence of official documents, the fragility of the legal structure,"

The United States has ended the Temporary Protected Status (TPS) designation for Syria, warning Syrian migrants they now face arrest and deportation if they do not leave the country within 60 days. The action on Friday came as part of US President Donald Trump's broad effort to strip legal status from migrants. It will terminate TPS for more than 6,000 Syrians who have had access to the legal status since 2012, according to a Federal Register notice posted Friday.

Desperate families flocked to former detention centres, prisons, morgues, and mass grave sites to try to find their missing relatives after al-Assad's removal, and investigators gained unprecedented access to government documents, witness accounts and human remains. A limited number of detainees were released alive, while the fate of tens of thousands remained unknown, rendering them forcibly disappeared. This revealed a major tragedy that affected Syrian society as a whole.

Back in 2015, with his native Syria in the full throes of civil war, Maso had little choice but to leave if he wanted to pursue a career in swimming. Hailing from Aleppo, a major battleground in the war, he was going for months on end without training. "It always had to depend on how safe the situation was and what the priorities were," he said. And so, together with older brother, Mo, he took the long and arduous journey to Europe via Turkey.

Iraqi and Lebanese intelligence agencies coordinated to discover and destroy one of Lebanon's largest drug factories making the highly addictive amphetamine Captagon.

The Syrian government is evacuating hundreds of Bedouin families trapped inside the southern city of Suwayda, where a fragile ceasefire is holding after Druze and Bedouin fighters fought for a week.

"Israeli intervention reignited tensions in the city, with fighting there a dangerous turning point," President Ahmed al-Sharaa stated, highlighting the escalating violence resulting from external military involvement.