A Syrian court sentenced ousted leader Bashar al-Assad to death ​on Tuesday (August 11, 2026) after a trial in absentia, convicting ‌him of crimes including killings, torture, and ​arbitrary arrest during the ⁠country’s nearly 14-year war.

It was the first conviction against Assad, who was ousted in a rebel ‌offensive in December 2024 that ended decades of his family’s iron-fisted ‌rule over Syria, and the brutal ‌war ⁠that killed hundreds of thousands of ⁠Syrians.

Assad fled the capital Damascus as rebel fighters approached nearly two years ago, and is currently ​in Moscow.

In a ‌trial of former government officials on Tuesday, a judge handed down a death sentence to Assad over the crimes of “premeditated ‌and intentional murder of more ​than one person and of children, torture, arbitrary arrest and crimes against humanity”.

Atef ⁠Najib, a security official under Assad, was also sentenced to death.

Assad, who was ‌born in 1965, became president in 2000 after his father Hafez died. He maintained the family’s rule and the dominance of their Alawite sect in the Sunni Muslim-majority country and Syria’s status as an ‌Iranian ally hostile to Israel and the U.S.

Shaped ​in its early years by the Iraq war and crisis in Lebanon, ⁠Assad’s rule was defined by civil war, ⁠which spiralled out of the 2011 Arab Spring, when Syrians demanding democracy took ‌to the streets, to be met with deadly force.

Syria’s President Ahmed al-Sharaa met Monday (August 3, 2026) with Nechirvan Barzani, leader of Iraq’s autonomous Kurdistan region, as official sources told AFP the talks aimed to advance an integration deal between Damascus and Syria’s Kurds.

Syrian state news agency SANA said Mr. Sharaa received Mr. Barzani at the Presidential palace in Damascus, in the first visit by the head of Iraq’s Kurdistan region following the December 2024 ouster of longtime Syrian ruler Bashar al-Assad.

After clashes between Syrian Kurdish fighters and the new authorities’ forces in January this year, the two sides reached a deal to integrate Syrian Kurdish institutions and forces into the state.

During the fighting, Mr. Barzani met Kurdish leader Mazloum Abdi, chief of the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Force (SDF), in Kurdistan’s Erbil in a U.S.-backed meeting.

Mr. Sharaa’s office said he and Mr. Barzani on Monday (August 3) discussed “strengthening cooperation and coordination, especially economic, in a way that contributes to supporting security and stability”.

Mr. Barzani, meanwhile, said in a statement that he affirmed his “support for a stable and united Syria, where the rights of all ethnic and religious communities are protected”.

He added that they discussed “the importance of Syria playing a constructive role in advancing regional peace and security”.

A Syrian official source had earlier told AFP on condition of anonymity that the pair would discuss the January deal and “procedures for integrating” the SDF into the state.

A Syrian diplomatic source, also requesting anonymity, told AFP that the one-day visit would mainly deal with “following up on the agreement between the state and the SDF”.

Mr. Barzani may also meet Mr. Abdi, the diplomatic source added.

The January fighting and subsequent accord shattered Kurdish aspirations for autonomy in swathes of north and northeast Syria, which they had controlled for years during the country’s civil war, after battles against the Islamic State jihadist group.

Damascus and the Kurdish authorities have taken several steps since the deal, including the entry of government forces into the cities of Hasakeh and Qamishli, and transferring the management of Qamishli airport and key oil fields to the state.

Senior Kurdish military official Sipan Hamo was appointed regional assistant defence minister.

But differences between the sides have held up the integration of several SDF brigades into the Syrian army.

The agreement also provided for the return of displaced Syrian Kurds to their areas of origin, though some are still waiting to go back.

Mr. Barzani at the time welcomed the January deal and expressed hope it would pave the way for the “protection of the rights of the Kurds in the forthcoming constitution”.

Syria is seeking to reach ⁠a security agreement with Israel, Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa said in an interview with Al Jazeera on Sunday (July 27, 2026). He said a deal could pave the way for comprehensive peace between ‌the two countries without compromising Syria’s right to the Golan Heights, an area that Israel captured from Syria in the 1967 ‌Six-Day War and annexed in 1981.

Mr. Sharaa said Syria was trying ‌to ⁠involve a large group of countries to pressure Israel to ⁠adopt a more balanced policy towards Syria. “We are avoiding getting into confrontations,” he added. Soon after former Syrian President Bashar Al Assad fell to rebel forces advancing under Sharaa’s leadership ​in December 2024, Israeli troops pushed ‌into Syria and seized strategic territories. Israeli troops moved into a demilitarized zone inside Syria, including the Syrian side of Mount Hermon, which overlooks the capital Damascus. Since then, the Israeli military has launched strikes on ‌Syria and detained individuals from within the country. Israel has also intervened ​in what it calls missions to protect ethnic minority Druze in southwestern Syria.

On Sunday (July 26, 2026), Israeli forces shelled areas in Syria ⁠and destroyed an electrical transformer in the village of Maariyah, depriving homes of power, Syria’s state news agency SANA said. Mr. Sharaa’s comments coincided with U.N. Secretary-General ‌Antonio Guterres visiting Syria, the first trip by a United Nations chief to the country since 2009.

In a statement on X on Sunday (July 26, 2026), Mr. Guterres called for respect for Syria’s sovereignty, independence, unity and territorial integrity.

“Violations by Israel of the 1974 Disengagement of Forces Agreement are unacceptable & must stop,” Mr. Guterres said.

Last year, Mr. Sharaa, who is trying to rehabilitate Syria’s image, became the first ‌Syrian president since 1967 to take part in the U.N. General Assembly in New ​York. His government is seeking to rebuild international ties and the local economy after nearly 14 years of war and decades ⁠of isolation and death under Assad family rule. Mr. Sharaa also said his government is “not ⁠considering military interventions” in Lebanon. The Iran-backed Shiite Lebanese militant group Hezbollah and Sharaa fought on opposing sides of the Syrian civil war.

Earlier ‌this year, U.S. President Donald Trump said he had spoken to Mr. Sharaa about combating Hezbollah, after criticizing Israel for killing too many civilians ​in Lebanon.

Israel’s Defence Minister said Wednesday (July 1, 2026) that Israeli forces would remain in self-proclaimed “security zones” established in Lebanon, Syria and Gaza, without any timeline for withdrawal.

“The IDF will remain in the security zones in Lebanon, Syria and Gaza indefinitely in order to protect our residents and communities from jihadist elements,” Israel Katz said.

“We will not withdraw from the security zones,” Mr. Katz said at a function held in honour of Israeli soldiers killed during the 2006 war in Lebanon.

Mr. Katz also reiterated an earlier warning to Iran, saying the Islamic republic would be struck with “full force” if it attacked Israel over its operations in Lebanon.

Israel and Lebanon signed a U.S.-sponsored framework agreement under U.S. sponsorship on Friday (June 26, 2026) to pave the way for peace between the two countries and disarm the Iran-backed militant group Hezbollah.

Israeli officials, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, have repeatedly ruled out withdrawing troops from southern Lebanon, where Israeli forces continue to clash with Hezbollah fighters.

They maintain that any troop withdrawal would happen only after Hezbollah has been disarmed across Lebanon.

Hezbollah drew Lebanon into the Middle East war in early March with rocket fire aimed at Israel to avenge the killing of Iran’s supreme leader in U.S.-Israeli strikes.

Israel responded with massive airstrikes and a ground invasion of southern Lebanon.

According to Lebanon’s Health Ministry, nearly 4,300 people have been killed in Israeli attacks since the war erupted.

The Israeli military says it has lost 38 soldiers and one civilian contractor in Lebanon since fighting began in early March.

Israel has also carried out repeated incursions and bombings in Syria since the overthrow of longtime ruler Bashar al-Assad, saying it seeks to establish a demilitarised zone in the country’s south.

In Gaza, Israeli forces occupy nearly 70% of the territory.

Both the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas and the Israeli military accuse each other of violating the ceasefire, which has been in effect since October last year.

By >Simon Cotton , University of Birmingham 

There are >allegations that a nerve agent was used in Syria recently. According to US officials, it >killed more than 1,400 people, including 400 children. But since then, in a >more recent incident , a bomb dropped on a school caused many children to suffer from burns. 

The substance used was >widely reported as napalm. But was it? How can we know for sure? And what is napalm anyway? 

Napalm has come to be associated with its use by the American and South Vietnamese forces during the Vietnam War, but its origins go further back.

In her book Greek Fire, Poison Arrows and Scorpion Bombs, the distinguished classical scholar Adrienne Mayor recalls that the Persian army under Xerxes the Great used flaming arrows 2,500 years ago. Not long after that the Roman army used spears tipped by a mixture of burning pitch and sulphur as a weapon.

By 700 AD, the inhabitants of Constantinople had developed a fearsome substance that became known as Greek fire. Crude oil had been discovered long before that, and it was widely used as a source of naphtha, an ingredient in flaming projectiles. To their mixture, Byzantines added further refinements.

Today, the ingredients are a lost secret, but it looks as if they used naphtha, pine resin and other chemicals including sulphur, projecting it long distances by forcing it through a nozzle under pressure, the original flamethrower. High-boiling chemicals like pine resin would enable the mixture to burn for longer and reach higher temperatures than one purely based on petrol-like molecules. It would also cause the burning mixture to adhere to any surface – or person – unlucky enough to be in its way. This was used twice successfully to fight off the Muslim navy besieging Constantinople.

Some people have called World War I “the Chemists’ War” for its use of substances like chlorine and mustard gas. One of the less successful weapons was the gasoline flamethrower. The trouble with it was that it burned too fast.

During World War II, American scientists re-investigated this weapon, in a team led by Louis Fieser (who an older generation of chemists will associate with an organic chemistry textbook). Just like the Byzantines, they found that adding a thickening agent to the fuel created something that burned longer and also tended to stick to surfaces. Their thickening agent was a soap-like material based on aluminum naphthenate and aluminium palmitate. The name napalm was derived from the first parts of the words naphthalene and palmitate. When they mixed this with gasoline, they got a viscous sticky brown liquid which burned more slowly and produced higher temperatures, making it a very effective weapon for fire-bombing cities, for example. Since then this formula has been refined many times.

It was found that if you mixed polystyrene (the stuff used to make plastic model kits, or in “expanded” form as a packaging) with benzene and gasoline, the resulting product was less flammable and thus safer to handle. Despite the fact it contained neither naphthalene nor palmitate, it became known as napalm B. Burning napalm would set peoples’ clothing on fire and produce 4th or 5th degree burns penetrating right through the skin. It came into combat use in the Korean War and even though it has been used by many countries in different conflicts since then, it is imperishably associated with the Vietnam War.

There is a photo of a nine-year-old Vietnamese victim of a misdirected napalm attack running down a road. She is naked because she has ripped off her burning clothes. Thanks to surgery she survived and >Phan Thi Kim Phuc now lives in Canada. 

Napalm has not been outlawed as a weapon of war, but a United Nations convention forbids its use against civilian populations. William Butler Yeats used the phrase “a terrible beauty is born” when writing about the Easter Rising of 1916. Napalm is not beautiful, it is obscene.

Simon Cotton does not work for, consult to, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has no relevant affiliations. 

This article was originally published at >The Conversation . Read the >original article . 

Syria’s government and Kurdish forces on Saturday (January 24, 2026) extended their truce by 15 days, with Damascus saying it was to support the U.S. transfer of Islamic State group detainees from Syria to Iraq.

Several sources had earlier told AFP the truce would be prolonged, with a Syrian official in Damascus citing the same reason.

In a statement, the Syrian Defence Ministry said the 15-day extension would take effect at 11 p.m. (2000 GMT) on Saturday (January 24, 2026).

“The extension of the ceasefire comes in support of the American operation to transfer Islamic State detainees from SDF prisons to Iraq,” the statement added, referring to the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces.

The SDF also confirmed the extension, saying it was reached “through international mediation, while dialogue with Damascus continues”.

“Our forces affirm their commitment to the agreement and their dedication to respecting it, which contributes to de-escalation, the protection of civilians, and the creation of the necessary conditions for stability,” it said in a statement.

Damascus and the SDF had initially agreed to a four-day ceasefire after Kurdish forces relinquished swathes of territory to government troops, who also sent reinforcements to a Kurdish stronghold in the northeast.

Three sources, including a Kurdish source and a Syrian official in Damascus, had told AFP earlier on Saturday (January 24, 2026) that the ceasefire would be extended.

IS transfer

After the SDF lost large areas to government forces, Washington said it would transfer 7,000 IS detainees to prisons in Iraq.

Europeans were among the 150 senior IS detainees who were the first to be transferred on Wednesday (January 21, 2026), and two Iraqi officials told AFP that a second batch of “up to 1,000 IS detainees” were being sent on Saturday (January 24, 2026).

Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan, whose country is a key backer of Damascus but hostile to the SDF, had said during a TV interview Friday (January 23, 2026) that in light of the IS prisoner transfers, “extending the ceasefire for a while longer might be considered”.

The transfer is expected to take several days.

IS swept across Syria and Iraq in 2014, committing massacres and other atrocities before ultimately being territorially defeated by the SDF and a US-led coalition.

The truce between Damascus and the Kurds is part of a new understanding over Kurdish-majority areas in Hasakeh province and a broader deal to integrate the Kurds’ administration into the state.

Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa’s Islamist forces toppled longtime ruler Bashar al-Assad in 2024.

The new authorities are seeking to extend state control across Syria, resetting international ties including with the United States, now a key ally.

The Kurdish source said the SDF submitted a proposal to the authorities through U.S. envoy Tom Barrack that would have the government managing border crossings — a key Damascus demand.

It also proposes that Damascus would “allocate part of the economic resources — particularly revenue from border crossings and oil — to the Kurdish-majority areas”, the source added.

Earlier this month, the Syrian army recaptured oil fields, including the country’s largest, while advancing against Kurdish forces.

On Saturday (January 24, 2026), Syria’s government freed at least 126 minors being held in a prison for IS detainees in Raqa province in northern Syria after taking over the facility from Kurdish forces.

A suicide ‍bomber targeted a police patrol ​in Aleppo, killing one ‌person and wounding ​two members of the security forces, a Syrian government spokesperson said on Wednesday (December 31, 2025).

“The person who detonated an explosive belt within the patrol ​in Aleppo is believed ⁠to have an ideological or organisational background linked to Islamic ​State,” Interior Ministry ⁠spokesperson Nour al-Din al-Baba told state-owned news agency Al Ekhbariya, adding that investigations ‌were ongoing to determine ‌the attacker’s identity.

The attacker detonated himself while ‍being searched by the patrol after arousing suspicion, Ekhbariya ‍TV reported, citing a security source.

No group has claimed responsibility for the attack.

Earlier this month, two U.S. Army soldiers and a civilian interpreter were killed ⁠in Syria by a suspected Islamic State attacker ​who targeted a convoy ⁠of American and Syrian forces before being shot dead.

The secretary general of Amnesty International said Saturday that the new authorities in Syria have taken steps to show commitment to reform, transitional justice and reconciliation but says democracy is still lacking.

A year after the fall of President Bashar Assad’s government, Agnes Callamard, who visited Damascus this week, said that having legal reform plans before parliament, committees for transitional justice and welcoming international rights groups and other experts were signs that change is happening in Syria.

“All of those things are very good signs but they are not very deep,” Ms. Callamard said in an interview with The Associated Press.

Messages left with Syrian officials seeking comment Saturday (November 29, 2025) were not immediately returned.

After the fall of Assad in an offensive led by the Islamist Hayat Tahrir al-Sham of interim President Ahmad al-Sharaa, Syria remains unstable. Forces loyal to the government were blamed for taking part this year in sectarian violence against members of the country’s Druze and Alawite minorities in the coastal region and the southern province of Sweida that left hundreds dead.

The state has formed committees to investigate atrocities against Druze in Sweida and the trial of those suspected of involvement in the violence along the coast in March began last week.

Over the past year, scores of Assad-era officials have been detained and are expected to be put on trial in the near future to face charges for human rights violations committed over decades in the Arab country.

Ms. Callamard said she was told by Syrian officials, including the minister of justice, that hundreds of detainees are being held in “relation to abuses by the former regime.”

“There is seemingly a process whereby charges will be drafted very soon,” she said, asking what are the grounds for their arrest and who is going to try them. Ms. Callamard added that the legal framework needs urgent reform “because some of the most gruesome crimes under international law have not been domesticated.”

Ms. Callamard said that she held talks with members of the National Commission on Transitional Justice and the National Commission for the Missing, on the process of collecting evidence from Assad-era prisons, adding that the process is ongoing and “will be a long process and slow.”

She said that unlike Ukraine, where some European countries established teams of experts to support Ukrainian authorities in their investigation into atrocities “nothing like that is happening in Syria. Nothing. So that needs to change.”

“We really need to see the international community doing a bit more of a leap of faith, hearing the cries for change of the Syrian people,” Ms. Callamard said. She added that despite lack of movement by international community, several small civil society organisations are the one providing all that kind of evidence in Syria.

“My impression after that very short visit, arguably, is that for the international community, Syria is a problem that must be contained,” she said. “It seems to me that very few countries are prepared to to do the leap of faith into that and frankly.”

“Without that support, I don’t know whether what’s happening right now will be sustainable,” she said.

Last month, Syria held its first parliamentary elections since Assad’s fall but there was no direct popular vote in the elections. Two-thirds of the 210-member assembly seats were elected through province-based electoral colleges, with seats distributed by population, while one-third will be appointed directly by al-Sharaa. The new parliament will serve a 30-month term while preparing for future elections.

The first trial was opened on Tuesday of some of the hundreds of suspects linked to deadly clashes in Syria’s coastal provinces earlier this year that quickly spiralled into sectarian attacks.

State media reported that 14 people were brought to Aleppo’s Palace of Justice following a month-long, government-led investigation into the violence in March involving government forces and supporters of the ousted Syrian President Bashar Assad. The investigating committee referred 563 suspects to the judiciary.

Seven of the defendants in the court were Assad loyalists, while the other seven were members of the new government’s security forces. A judge was heard during the televised proceedings asking whether they were military or civilian.

The trial follows pressure from the public and the international community for the country’s new rulers to commit to judicial reform after decades under the autocratic rule of the Assad dynasty.

Despite initial reports by the state media that charges could quickly be brought against the defendants, the judge adjourned the session and rescheduled the next hearing for December.

Charges against the suspects could include sedition, inciting civil war, attacking security forces, murder, looting and leading armed gangs, according to state media.

Given the scale of the violence and the number of suspects, it is unclear how long the proceedings will take.

The clashes in March erupted after armed groups aligned with Assad ambushed the new government’s security forces. A counteroffensive then spiralled into sectarian revenge attacks and the massacre of hundreds of civilians from the Alawite religious minority, to which Assad belongs and who largely live along the coast.

The attacks on the Alawite community mounted pressure on interim President Ahmad al-Sharaa. Since coming to power in December, his government has scrambled to step out from diplomatic isolation and convince the US to drop crippling sanctions and boost trade to rebuild the war-torn country.

The government’s investigating committee in July concluded that over 1,400 people, mostly civilians, were killed during several days of sectarian violence. But the inquiry said there was no evidence that Syria’s new military leaders had ordered attacks on the Alawite community.

A United Nations probe, however, found that violence targeting civilians by government-aligned factions had been “widespread and systematic.” The UN commission said that during the violence, homes in Alawite-majority areas were raided and civilians were asked “whether they were Sunni or Alawite.” It said: ”Alawite men and boys were then taken away to be executed.”

Syria’s President Ahmed al-Sharaa arrived in the United States on Saturday (November 8, 2025) for a landmark official visit, his country’s state news agency reported, a day after Washington removed him from a terrorism blacklist.

Mr. Sharaa, whose rebel forces ousted longtime ruler Bashar al-Assad late last year, is due to meet U.S. President Donald Trump at the White House on Monday (November 10).

It’s the first such visit by a Syrian president since the country’s independence in 1946, according to analysts.

The interim leader met Mr. Trump for the first time in Riyadh during the U.S. President’s regional tour in May.

U.S. envoy to Syria Tom Barrack said earlier this month that Mr. Sharaa would “hopefully” sign an agreement to join the international U.S.-led alliance against the Islamic State (IS).

The United States plans to establish a military base near Damascus “to coordinate humanitarian aid and observe developments between Syria and Israel”, a diplomatic source in Syria told AFP.

The State Department’s decision Friday (November 7) to remove Mr. Sharaa from the blacklist was widely expected.

State Department spokesman Tommy Pigott said Mr. Sharaa’s government had been meeting U.S. demands including on working to find missing Americans and on eliminating any remaining chemical weapons.

“These actions are being taken in recognition of the progress demonstrated by the Syrian leadership after the departure of Bashar al-Assad and more than 50 years of repression under the Assad regime,” Mr. Pigott said.

The spokesman added that the U.S. delisting would promote “regional security and stability as well as an inclusive, Syrian-led and Syrian-owned political process.”

Transformation

Mr. Sharaa’s Washington trip comes after his landmark visit to the United Nations in September — his first time on U.S. soil — where the ex-jihadist became the first Syrian president in decades to address the UN General Assembly in New York.

On Thursday (November 6), Washington led a vote by the Security Council to remove UN sanctions against him.

Formerly affiliated with Al-Qaeda, Mr. Sharaa’s group, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), was delisted as a terrorist group by Washington as recently as July.

Since taking power, Syria’s new leaders have sought to break from their violent past and present a moderate image more tolerable to ordinary Syrians and foreign powers.

The White House visit “is further testament to the U.S. commitment to the new Syria and a hugely symbolic moment for the country’s new leader, who thus marks another step in his astonishing transformation from militant leader to global statesman,” International Crisis Group U.S. program director Michael Hanna said.

Mr. Sharaa is expected to seek funds for Syria, which faces significant challenges in rebuilding after 13 years of brutal civil war.

In October, the World Bank put a “conservative best estimate” of the cost of rebuilding Syria at $216 billion.