Closing summary
Hundreds of Syrians marched through central Damascus in a funeral procession for Mazen al-Hamada, the prominent anti-Assad activist whose body was found at Sednaya prison after the fall of regime. Mourners turned the funeral into a call for justice, with marchers carrying posters of other missing detainees and chanting for Assad to be put on trial.
US secretary of state Antony Blinken said that he is working to bring Travis Timmerman, the US citizen who was found in Syria, back to the United States, Reuters reports. Timmerman was found in the suburbs of Damascus on Thursday and said he was detained after crossing into Syria on foot on a Christian pilgrimage earler this year.
Some EU countries have doubled down on their decision to rapidly halt asylum procedures for Syrian migrants in Europe, but said it is too early to consider sending home any of the hundreds of thousands of people who have fled since 2011. Austria, Belgium, Germany, Greece, Finland, Ireland, Sweden and non-EU country Norway have suspended asylum applications from Syrians in the wake of Bashar Assad’s fall.
UN secretary general Antonio Guterres is deeply concerned by “the recent and extensive violations of Syria’s sovereignty and territorial integrity,” a spokesperson said on Thursday. “The secretary general is particularly concerned over the hundreds of Israeli air strikes on several locations in Syria, stressing the need the urgent need to deescalate violence on all fronts throughout the country,” Stéphane Dujarric told reporters.
The UN World Food Programme (WFP) is increasing its programmes to reach 2.8 million displaced and food-insecure people across Syria, saying the recent hostilities have displaced hundreds of thousands across the country, worsening an already dire food security situation. “Right now, commercial supply routes are compromised, food prices are soaring, and the Syrian currency is depreciating,” said WFP’s country director in Syria, Kenn Crossley.
Israel says it will “continue to act to defend itself” after France urged it to withdraw from the UN-patrolled buffer zone separating Israeli and Syrian forces in the Golan Heights. Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, announced on Sunday he had ordered the army to “seize” the demilitarised zone in the Syrian-controlled part of the Golan Heights after rebels swept Syrian president Bashar al-Assad from power.
US secretary of state Antony Blinken said that the role of the Kurdish-led SDF fighters was “critical” to prevent an insurgence of the Islamic State, Agence France-Presse reports. Blinken, who is currently on a visit to Jordan to discuss the situation in Syria with King Abdullah, said: “At a time when we want to see this transition... to a better way forward for Syria, part of that also has to be ensuring that ISIS doesn’t rear its ugly head again. And critical to making sure that doesn’t happen are the so-called SDF - the Syrian Democratic Forces.”
We’re now closing this blog. Thanks for following along.
The streets of Damascus have been filled with celebrations since Bashar al-Assad fled to Russia last Sunday in the face of an unexpected rebel offensive, ending more than 50 years of his family’s brutal rule over Syria.
But at a public funeral for Mazen al-Hamadah – before his disappearance in 2020 one of the most vocal survivors of torture in the regime’s prisons system – the joy gave way to sorrow, as the country begins to grapple with the fact that many of the estimated 130,000 people missing may be lost forever.
Thousands of people flooded the streets on Thursday, following Hamadah’s body, wrapped in a traditional white shroud, as it was driven slowly from a hospital to the Abdulrahman Abu al Ouf mosque for funeral prayers. At a vigil afterwards in nearby al-Hijaz square, thousands of men, women and children cried and hugged each other, many carrying pictures of their own disappeared loved ones.
The initial euphoria of finding missing people alive after rebels broke down prison cell doors on their astonishing advance to the capital has faded; many anxious families have searched prisons and morgues, and combed through ransacked regime documents and records, and have found nothing. But even so, such a public outpouring of grief would have been unthinkable less than a week ago, when Syria was still a repressive police state.
