Author: William Christou
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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…