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Syria Direct
@syriadirect.bsky.social
350 followers 1 following 920 posts
Independent media and training organization producing in-depth, investigative reporting on Syria by our team of Syrian and international journalists.

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🧵 More than 11 months on, Israel’s occupation of parts of Syria’s southwestern Quneitra province seemingly has no end in sight.

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A newly constructed Israeli outpost sits on a hill in Syria’s southwestern Quneitra province, 14/10/2025
November 14, 2025 at 2:44 PM
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🧵 As Syrian President Ahmad al-Sharaa visits the White House, one of the topics on the table is the possibility of Syria joining the US-led international coalition against IS. What would that mean?

🔗 bit.ly/4qRFTVp
A security operation conducted by Syria’s General Intelligence and Internal Security Command against an Islamic State (IS) cell in Reef Dimashq province. The operation resulted in the dismantling of the cell, the arrest of one member and the death of two others. The picture shows military vehicles parked outside a building.
November 10, 2025 at 3:31 PM
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🧵 More than a month into the academic year in northeastern Syria, students enrolled in a number of schools remain locked out of their classrooms as a years-long struggle continues over what and how students learn in areas held by the SDF.

🔗 bit.ly/4i5AzKh
The Nasaim al-Bar private school in Hasakah city, which has been closed since the AANES banned Syrian government curriculum in September 2025. The school is a single-story stone building, with a wall and gate in front.
November 6, 2025 at 5:36 PM
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🧵 The Trump administration’s abrupt termination of Syrians’ Temporary Protected Status has left thousands scrambling for solutions before a November 21 deadline to self-deport or become undocumented.

🔗 bit.ly/4ogHqCE
People watch as the sun sets behind the Statue of Liberty—historically a symbol of immigration to the United States—in New York, 3/7/2025. Rays of light peek through the cloudy sky, which is a deep orange color that is also reflected on the surface of the water between two figures in silhouette and the statue in the distance, also in silhouette.
November 4, 2025 at 2:49 PM
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In October alone, Syria Direct tracked the deaths of 15 people, most of them civilians, in attacks by unidentified gunmen, revenge killings and accidental shootings across Daraa.
A screenshot of an interactive map entitled "Victims of Insecurity and Uncontrolled Weapons in Daraa Province (2025)." Multicolored pins indicate the location of incidents including assassinations, revenge killings and armed robbery.
October 31, 2025 at 2:06 PM
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🧵 Why is Damascus pursuing a rapprochement with Moscow despite its unpopularity, and how might it strike a balance between Syrian public opinion and strategic interests?

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Russian President Vladimir Putin and Syrian interim president Ahmed al-Sharaa walk towards each other toshake hands during their meeting at the Grand Kremlin Palace in Moscow, 10/15/2025. They are in an ornate room with a highly decorated carpet and ceiling, and behind them stand Syrian and Russian officials, as well as a Syrian and Russian flag.
October 22, 2025 at 3:07 PM
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🧵 As the Syrian government prepares to issue new banknotes and cut zeros from the country’s depreciated currency, everyday Syrians care most about easier everyday transactions.

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A currency trader sits by a stack of Syrian pounds at his street stall in Damascus, 14/1/2025.
October 21, 2025 at 5:02 PM
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🧵 As Syria stares down drought and a changing climate, farmers and officials in agriculture-dependent Daraa province grapple with how to adapt.

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A group of Syrian transitional government officials—including Minister of Agriculture and Agrarian Reform Amjad Badr and Daraa Governor Anwar al-Zoubi—visit a cactus farm following a meeting to discuss the 2025-2026 agricultural plan and challenges facing farmers in the drought-stricken southern province, 8/5/2025. In the picture, a group of men stand in a mostly bare field as one points towards a prickly pear cactus.
October 14, 2025 at 3:08 PM
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🧵 Clashes last week between government forces and the SDF in Aleppo city’s Kurdish Sheikh Maqsoud and Ashrafieh neighborhoods marked the latest setback in fitful integration efforts between the two sides.

🔗 bit.ly/46I8KUa
An Internal Security Forces checkpoint monitors the entrance and exit of civilians from the Kurdish-majority Sheikh Maqsoud and Ashrafieh neighborhoods of Aleppo city, 9/10/2025. Four men dressed in black with khakhi vests man the checkpoint, while two cars and one man on a motorcycle pass on the street.
October 13, 2025 at 2:29 PM
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🧵 Former regime soldiers say the demobilization process launched when Assad fell has stalled, leaving many in hiding and without civilian IDs—only expired “settlement cards” they fear put a target on their backs.

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Laith (a pseudonym), a former Syrian regime soldier, holds the settlement card he received at a demobilization center in December 2024, which has since expired, 18/09/2025
October 7, 2025 at 3:36 PM
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As Syria holds its first post-Assad parliamentary elections, some express support for the indirect electoral process, while others criticize its lack of transparency.

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A member of Syria's local election committees in Damascus casts her vote in the country's selection process to designate an interim parliament, 5/10/2025 (Louai Beshara/AFP). The elector voting is a woman wearing glasses, a white hijab and long dark jacket. She inserts a paper ballot into a clear glass case. Men and women wearing red lanyards stand nearby, in front of a Syrian flag.
October 5, 2025 at 9:06 PM
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🧵 Salamiya, a Hama province city home to most of Syria’s Ismaili minority, has been a post-Assad “success story.” Community leaders and analysts emphasize the importance of dialogue and inclusive governance in ensuring communal harmony.

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The Prince Ali Khan Shrine in the Hama city of Salamiya. The shrine is a building made of light-colored stone blocks, with a green dome. Trees line the street outside, along with a man rides a motorbike. 14/9/2025
October 2, 2025 at 12:49 PM
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🧵 Bulgarian authorities are pressuring and coercing Syrian asylum seekers to return home, part of a wider European shift that began before the fall of the Assad regime last December, but has accelerated since.

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An empty check-in desk at Bulgaria's Sofia International Airport. Deportations from Bulgaria to Syria are done on regular commercial flights from this airport, with connections through Istanbul or Dubai.
September 29, 2025 at 12:20 PM
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Some key water sources are in sharp decline. At the al-Ashaari water pumping station—a state-run facility that draws from a group of natural springs—the flow has fallen by 85% over 26 years of operation. It dropped by more than half between June and September alone.
A bar graph demonstrates the declining flow rate at Daraa's al-Ashaari Water Station from 1995 to 2025. It was 1,083 cubic meter per hour in 1999, then 750 cubic meters per hour in 2011, 500 cubic meters ber hour in June 2025 and 200 cubic meters per hour in September 2025.
September 26, 2025 at 11:05 AM
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🧵 Historic drought, degraded infrastructure and unregulated well drilling drain Daraa’s water as authorities struggle to respond to the country’s worst water crisis in decades.

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A man crouches next to a pipe as water bursts from a new solar-powered well in the east Daraa town of al-Musayfra. Funded by a local donor, it was drilled under the supervision of provincial authorities, 7/9/2025. In the background, a mosque with a light blue dome and a few low, square buildings can be seen.
September 26, 2025 at 11:05 AM
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🧵 A violent eviction raid on the Alawite slum of al-Somoriyeh in late August was part of a deeper story: a longstanding property dispute with the neighboring Sunni town of Moadamiyat al-Sham, whose residents were expropriated under Hafez al-Assad.

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A makeshift house in the Alawite-majority informal neighborhood of al-Somoriyeh, west of Damascus, marked with an “X” for eviction, 4/9/2025
September 10, 2025 at 4:33 PM
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🧵 Syrian and Lebanese officials met on Monday amid rising calls for the repatriation of more than 2,000 Syrians detained in overcrowded Lebanese prisons that have seen around 40 deaths in the past two years.

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A woman holds up a sign (in Arabic) reading “12 years and the injustice continues and increases” as relatives of Syrian and Lebanese detainees demonstrate outside Roumieh prison, east of Beirut, 27/8/2025
September 2, 2025 at 4:00 PM
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Syria Direct joins with more than 250 media outlets across the world to condemn the Israeli army's killings of journalists in Gaza. We also call on the Israeli authorities to allow independent access for the international press in the Gaza Strip.
The text "At the rate journalists are being killed in Gaza by the Israeli army, there will soon be no one left to keep you informed. #ProtectJournalistsInGaza #LetReportersIntoGaza" appears against a background of a dim black image of a cloud of smoke rising over buildings in Gaza.
September 1, 2025 at 12:14 PM
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🧵 Some Syrians returning from Jordan to Daraa use caravans smuggled out of Zaatari camp as temporary shelters while they work to rebuild their destroyed homes.

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A red water tank sits outside Salim Hamed’s new house, built from caravans he brought back from Jordan’s Zaatari refugee camp to his hometown in Inkhil, Daraa, 25/8/2025
August 27, 2025 at 4:14 PM
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🧵 After years in exile, organic farmers Bilal and Assia Abu Saleh returned home to a looted house and parched land that will be a challenge to cultivate. Yet they have a clear goal: to rebuild Syria for their children and lead it toward food sovereignty.

🔗 bit.ly/4mRqhOL
Bilal Abu Saleh, 37, an organic and heirloom seed farmer, looks off into the distance as he stands on his farm in al-Buweida al-Saghira, southern Aleppo, 28/6/2025. He wears a red and blue checkered shirt, the sleeves rolled up to his elbows, and light blue jeans. The ground under his feet is dry, and drip irrigation tubing runs along rows of green plants.
August 22, 2025 at 12:23 PM
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🧵 Thousands of refugees are packing up their lives and returning from Jordan’s Zaatari camp to Syria—a country that some have never known.

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Alaa Faouri, a young boy, plays with a blue toy truck as he sits with his cousins in their caravan in Jordan’s northern Zaatari refugee camp, 7/7/2025
August 21, 2025 at 4:10 PM
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For more than a decade, Bushra and Nidal built a life and raised eight children in Amman, Jordan. Now, high costs of living and aid cuts are pushing them to return to Syria—despite the hardships waiting on the other side of the border.

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Bushra Abu Adnan and her husband Nidal Abu Shafeh sit together on an orange couch in their small apartment in Amman, Jordan, 9/7/2025 (Wishbox Media)
August 20, 2025 at 3:01 PM
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🧵 While Damascus hails the emptying of Assad regime prisons, detainees arrested for opposing Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) continue to languish in Idlib prisons. Others have disappeared.

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Amina al-Hamam, 70, the mother of Ghazwan Hassun, who was detained by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) in 2019, looks at a picture of her son on one of her grandchildren’s phones in her tent in a displacement camp in Kafr Lusin, northern Idlib, 12/3/2024
August 14, 2025 at 4:17 PM
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🧵 In Tremseh, an idyllic village in northern Hama with a bloody past, thousands of displaced residents have found their way home. Reunited with old friends, they are working to rebuild a community and heal old scars.

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A recently returned Tremseh villager walks through an orchard with his young son, on his way to tend to his beehives, 19/7/2025
August 11, 2025 at 12:21 PM
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🧵 Activists in Suwayda who were once open to the Damascus government weigh in on how their views have changed following a wave of sectarian violence—and whether any path forward remains.

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An aerial view of Druze-majority Suwayda city in southern Syria, 18/7/2025
July 25, 2025 at 5:58 PM