Key events
Aya Majzoub, Amnesty International’s deputy regional director for the Middle East and North Africa, described a visit to the government’s security and intelligence branches in Damascus.
Here’s what he wrote about social media:
For years the survivors had described the horrors they had experienced in these underground dungeons. But nothing could prepare us for what we saw.
These underground labyrinths are literally hell on earth. The boats were crawling with cockroaches and other insects and lacked ventilation. They still smell blood and death.’
Families continue to desperately search for their loved ones in hospitals, morgues and jails, he said, with some searching through body bags to get some closure.
“But many bodies have been mutilated by years of torture and starvation. Ten thousand remain missing,” he added.
Turkey to reopen its embassy in Syria
Turkey for a time considered the crime d’a accused when it reopened its embassy of Syriaaccording to the state-run media Anadolu Agency.
The Turkish embassy in Damascus suspended operations in 2012 amid concerns over security issues in Syria’s escalating civil war.
Travis Timmerman, an American citizen, spoke to the Associated Press I found out this week in the suburbs of Damascus, and who said that seven months before he had been detained in a Christian pilgrimage on foot to the country.
Speaking from a hotel in Damascus, Timmerman described his release as a “blessing”.
He said he was among the thousands of people released from Syrian military prisons this week. He was freed by saviors who came to the prison and broke open the door with a hammer, he said.
He said that the women had been in the cells above him, and that he had heard them singing and teaching their children. He also heard that some men were regularly beaten. “I’ve never been defeated,” he said.
The 29-year-old doesn’t seem bitter about the time he’s been locked up. “It’s a time of comfort and you can heal your life,” he told the AP. “It’s good for me.”
Here are the latest photos of Syria from wires;
The rebel leader is urging Syrians to celebrate in the streets on Friday
The leader of the Islamist rebels who took power in of Syria Last week, he called on people to take to the streets to celebrate what he described as the “victory of the happy revolution” on Friday.
In a video message shared on Telegram, Abu Mohammed al-Jolani, the leader of the group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, who now uses his real name Ahmed al-Sharaa, called on people to “go to the streets to express their joy.”.
His call comes ahead of Friday’s first speeches since Syria’s new leadership took over the government. In the early days of the Syrian uprising in 2011, protesters usually gathered after Friday prayers.
It was set up for Friday prayers at the border of the Umayyad mosque in Damascus.
Opening summary
Hello, hello, live our coverage of the events of Syria and around the Middle East. It is a little after noon in Damascus. Here are the major developments:
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The US Secretary of State, Anthony Blinken, wrapped up his visit to Turkey as part of a larger effort across the Middle East to encourage a peaceful political transition in Syria. The US administration is concerned that a power vacuum in Syria could exacerbate the region’s conflicts, already exacerbated by many conflicts, and create conditions for the Islamic State group to regain territory and influence.
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On Friday, Blinken said the agreement was broad based on what Turkey and the US want to see in Syria I will take care of them The two NATO allies have competing interests in Syria, with Turkey targeting a US-backed Kurdish group seen as key to containing extremists.
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Blinken also said that he had seen “encouraging signs” of the development of fire in Gaza and he urged Turkey to use its authority to encourage Hamas to withdraw. “We discussed Gaza, and I think we discussed opportunity. And what we’ve seen in the last two weeks are more encouraging signs that it can be done, Blinken told reporters.
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G7 leaders are set to gather virtually on Friday afternoon to discuss Syria. The leaders said they were ready to support an “inclusive and non-sectarian” government transition, and stressed “the importance of holding the Assad regime accountable for its crimes.”
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Russia has also established a direct relationship with the political group of the Syrian Islamist rebel group; Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, according to the Interfax news agency, which has delegated Russia’s deputy foreign minister, Mikhail Bogdanov. In comments to reporters, Bogdanov, as they say, seeks to maintain Moscow’s military bases in Syria.
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Ministers of Defense of Israel; Israel Katz, ordered the military “prepare to stay” throughout the winter in the UN-approved buffer zone between Israeli and Syrian forces in the strategic heights of the Golan. Israel occupied the demilitarized zone on Sunday, hours after Syrian rebels ousted Bashar al-Assad.
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In the United States, a former Syrian military official who guarded a prison where he was accused of human rights abuses by a federal grand jury on several counts of felony battery and conspiracy to commit a felony. Samir Ousman al-Sheikh, who oversaw Syria’s infamous Adra prison from 2005 to 2008 under late President Bashar Assad, was arrested in July on charges of visa fraud.