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Today — 22 December 2024Main stream

Christians in Aleppo are celebrating Christmas – but fear for their future

By: Bel Trew
22 December 2024 at 08:06

As Syria marks the overthrow of the Assad regime, Bel Trew visits Aleppo, where Christian residents are beset by uncertainty. She speaks to families worried about life under a new Islamist-led administration

© Bel Trew

Yesterday — 21 December 2024Main stream

‘I feared I would end up in the trench’: Digging Assad’s mass graves in Syria

By: Bel Trew
21 December 2024 at 06:58

Bel Trew reports from the site of a mass grave at Qutayfah, about 25 miles from the Syrian capital Damascus. There, she speaks to someone who dug the trenches before realising the true horror of what was happening at the site – while others warn of the scale of atrocities committed by the Assad regime before he was overthrown

© Bel Trew

Before yesterdayMain stream

Syria’s rebels took Homs back from Assad in a matter of days. Now they have to police it

By: Bel Trew
16 December 2024 at 08:09

Bel Trew meets the new police chief in Syria’s third city, tasked with keeping the peace now that forces led by the Islamist Hayat Tahrir al-Sham have ousted the regime of Bashar al-Assad. Every city across the country is now facing the same question: who will rule and how?

© Bel Trew/The Independent

Syrian defector who smuggled torture images out of country warns of hundreds of thousands of deaths

By: Bel Trew
15 December 2024 at 09:11

Photographer codenamed Caesar who captured more than 53,000 pictures documenting the horrors of the Assad regime tells Bel Trew how he risked his life to show the world what was happening – and his fears for what is still to be found

© Anadolu Agency/Getty

Thousands of Syrians escape horrific conditions of besieged camp

By: Bel Trew
14 December 2024 at 13:10

The Rukban camp was supposed to provide refuge to those fleeing chemical weapons attacks and other atrocities, writes Bel Trew. The thousands who became trapped there could only pray for survival until the fall of Assad’s regime

© Bel Trew

US ‘pilgrim’ freed from Syria jail heading to Jordan – but says he will return to Damascus

13 December 2024 at 06:03

Recently freed Travis Timmerman says he plans to return to Syria despite being jailed for seven months for entering the country without permission

© AFP via Getty Images

I sparked Syria’s revolution as a teenage boy – now I’m here to finish it

By: Bel Trew
12 December 2024 at 12:55

Muawiyah Syasneh was 16 when his anti-Assad graffiti on a school wall led to his arrest, sparking protests that ended in civil war. Now, in the very same spot, he tells chief international correspondent Bel Trew about the years-long war – and his role in bringing it to an end

© Bel Trew/The Independent

‘They used us as a testing ground for all kinds of weapons’: Syrians return to destroyed town

By: Bel Trew
12 December 2024 at 00:29

Bel Trew visits Jobar – north of Damascus – which was devastated by some of the fiercest battles of the civil war. She meets residents returning home for the first time in more than a decade. Both they, and Syria itself, face major challenges in starting anew

© Bel Trew/The Independent

‘We think he died just before regime collapsed’: Syrians scour morgues full of tortured bodies

By: Bel Trew
11 December 2024 at 00:30

From Assad’s slaughterhouse jail to the hospital morgue piled up with mutilated bodies, desperate Syrians search for family members disappeared under a despot’s brutal regime, reports Bel Trew

© Bel Trew/Independent

‘They tortured me when I asked to see him’: Wife of jailed Syrian reveals truth of Assad’s slaughterhouse jail

By: Bel Trew
10 December 2024 at 22:53

As the brutality of the Assad regime falls away, Bel Trew finds families driven by desperation, grief and fury as they searched for their lost loved ones

© AFP via Getty Images

Syrians emerging from Assad’s prisons taste ‘beautiful’ freedom as regime topples

Prisoners released from Syria’s notoriously torturous Saydnaya prison tell The Independent the feeling of freedom is indescribable and beautiful

© Nedal Al-Amari via REUTERS

‘Death is chasing us’: Syrian refugees flee Lebanon airstrikes straight into jaws of fresh war against Assad

7 December 2024 at 06:15

Bel Trew and Rana Najjar speak to those who have tried to escape Israeli strikes, only to find themselves on the front of another conflict, and visit a refugee camp in Lebanon to speak to those who fear for their relatives

© Bel Trew

Israel committing genocide in Gaza, says Amnesty International in new report

By: Bel Trew
5 December 2024 at 05:47

Israeli forces accused of subjecting Palestinians in Gaza to ‘slow and calculated death’ – Israel dismisses findings as ‘entirely baseless’

© Copyright 2023 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.

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