Author: William Christou
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‘The price was huge’: Hezbollah reeling as Lebanese ponder sacrifices of its war
Crowds of people gathered last week in the ruined town square of Aitaroun, south Lebanon, to attend the mass burial of 95 people, one of the largest funerals held in Lebanon since the start of the Hezbollah-Israel war. Hundreds of people waving Hezbollah flags watched as rows of coffins were brought in by four lorries,…
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‘The grapes won’t wait’: Lebanese winemakers fight to survive as war rages
In September Elias Maalouf and his father were sitting in Chateau Rayak, the family winery in the Bekaa valley in Lebanon, when they decided to head home for a lunch break. Five minutes later an Israeli jet dropped a bomb on a house across the street, crushing the three-storey building and destroying much of the…
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Israel strikes targets in southern Syria after demanding demilitarisation
Israeli warplanes have carried out several airstrikes on military targets outside Damascus and in southern Syria, as Israeli officials warned the country’s army not to move south of the capital city. Israeli jets struck military sites late on Tuesday in the town of Kiswah, south of Damascus, as well as in the southern province of…
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Massive crowds attend funeral of late Hezbollah leader Nasrallah
Tens of thousands of people have attended a funeral in Beirut for Hassan Nasrallah, who led the Iran-backed, Lebanese militia and political party Hezbollah for three decades before being killed in an Israeli bombing last September. The ceremony was held in a sports stadium in the southern suburbs of Beirut, which had extra seats installed…
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Lebanon elects Joseph Aoun as president after two-year vacancy
Lebanon’s parliament has elected the army commander Joseph Aoun as the country’s new president, ending a more than two-year vacancy and increasing confidence that a ceasefire with Israel will hold. Aoun received 99 out of 128 votes in the 13th attempt by a deeply divided parliament to elect a new head of state after the…
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Inside the Russian airbase in Syria where troops form fragile truce with rebels they once bombed
Standing at the gates of the Khmeimim airbase, a fighter from the Islamist rebel group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) eyed a pink vape being puffed on by a Russian soldier. Catching his gaze, the soldier offered it to him. The bearded fighter took a drag and shrugged, giving a thumbs up to the Russian soldier,…
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Sacks of chemicals, plastic fruit … and millions of pills: inside a Damascus Captagon factory
It was no secret, everyone seemed to know where it was. When asked for directions, the coffee vendor pointed up the hill. “The Captagon factory? Straight ahead.” On the outskirts of Damascus, just a 20-minute drive away from the centre of the Syrian capital, lay a sprawling industrial complex. Professed to be a soap factory,…
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‘The army just ran away’: how Bashar al-Assad lost his brutal grip on Syria
One month ago, during a meeting in Beirut, a senior western diplomat was venting his frustration: when would international sanctions be lifted from the Syrian president, Bashar al-Assad? Though the dictator had few friends, it seemed that the brutal killing and torture of hundreds of thousands of protesters had succeeded in finally crushing Syria’s 13-year…
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Syrian rebels begin to encircle Damascus amid denials Assad has fled
Syrian opposition forces have begun to encircle the capital city of Damascus after a lightning offensive brought rebel factions to Bashar al-Assad’s doorstep and led the president’s office to deny he had already fled the country. The advance came just a week after Islamist insurgents led by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) retook Aleppo in northern…