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    Clashes Erupt in Damascus Outskirts, Killing 9

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    The sectarian-tinged violence was directed at a suburb of the Syrian capital with a large population from the Druse minority. Local Druse leaders said they held the government responsible.Deadly clashes fueled by sectarian tensions erupted on the outskirts of the Syrian capital, Damascus, killing at least nine people, Syrian officials and a war monitoring group said on Tuesday.The violence erupted overnight from Monday to Tuesday in the Damascus suburb of Jaramana, which has a large population from the minority Druse sect. It began after an audio clip circulated on social media of a man insulting the Prophet Muhammad. The clip was attributed to a Druse cleric.The cleric and Druse religious figures in Jaramana denied the accusation. The Syrian Interior Ministry said that its initial findings showed that the cleric was not responsible and appealed for calm.As public anger over the clip grew, fighters in armored vehicles amassed overnight outside Jaramana and began shelling the city, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a war monitoring group based in Britain. Heavy gun battles also broke out.The audio clip set off demonstrations in a number of other cities, with some of the protesters inciting violence against the Druse, according to the Observatory.The Observatory did not say who was behind the attack on Jaramana, which also wounded 17 people. But local Druse religious authorities in the city said in a statement that they held the government “fully responsible for what happened and any worsening of the situation.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Syria’s Easter Celebrations Pass Peacefully, in Early Test of New Government

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      At one of the most famous Christian churches in Damascus, the Melkite Greek Catholic cathedral known as Al Zeitoun, the bishop spent part of Sunday’s Easter sermon comparing Jesus’s Resurrection to that of Syria.The metaphor was an obvious one. Less than five months have passed since Syrian rebels overthrew President Bashar al-Assad, putting a sudden end to the Assad family’s brutal half-century reign. The new Syria, liberated Syria, is still rising to its feet.But what that new nation will come to look like is an open question. While many Sunni Muslim Syrians have embraced the country’s new leaders, who espouse a conservative version of Islam, religious minorities who felt protected or empowered during Mr. al-Assad’s rule greeted the takeover with anxiety.Worshipers at the Orthodox Armenian Church in Damascus.Young people who attend Al Zeitoun church in the city streets on Saturday night.Easter, for Syria’s historically persecuted Christians, was therefore something of a test. How would the new government led by President Ahmed al-Shara, a former Al Qaeda member who says he has moderated and who has promised inclusivity and tolerance, handle one of Christianity’s most important holidays? Would it pass as peacefully as it had under Mr. al-Assad, who courted minority support with his secular outlook?We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Skirmish in Syrian Capital Raises Fears of Expanding Violence

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      The overnight incident in Damascus appeared to have been contained, but it has heightened concerns that the violence sweeping the country’s coastal region could spread.Gunmen attacked a position held by Syrian security forces in Damascus overnight, a war monitor said Monday, raising fears that the deadly violence sweeping Syria’s coastal region could spread to other parts of the country.The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which has monitored the Syrian conflict since 2011, said that unidentified gunmen threw grenades and opened fire overnight on a building housing government security forces in the highly fortified Mezzeh district of the capital, Damascus. Clashes with government security forces ensued, and it was unclear if anyone was injured, the observatory said. It added that an unspecified number of arrests had been made.There was no immediate comment from Syria’s new government or on state news media, and the information could not be independently verified.The attack came as the country was reeling from a spate of violence that erupted last week between fighters affiliated with Syria’s new government, headed by Ahmed al-Shara, and those loyal to the ousted dictator Bashar al-Assad.More than 1,300 people have been killed since the fighting began, largely in the coastal Latakia and Tartus Provinces, the heartland of Syria’s Alawite minority, according to the observatory. It said on Monday that about 1000 civilians were included in that figure, most of whom were killed by armed forces affiliated with or loyal to the new government. The information could not be independently verified.The violence has stoked fears of a renewed sectarian conflict and presented what appeared to be the most serious challenge yet to Syria’s new leaders as they attempt to unite the country after more than a decade of war. The Assad family is Alawite and the sect dominated the country’s upper class and highest ranks of the former regime’s military.While state news media quoted a spokesman for the defense ministry, Col. Hassan Abdul Ghani, as saying on Monday that the “military operation” was over, the violence reportedly continued, as fighters affiliated with the government stormed a town near the coastal port city of Baniyas and set fire to homes, according to the observatory. . Syria’s interim president, Mr. al-Shara, said on Sunday that the government was forming a fact-finding committee to investigate the violence in the coastal regions and to bring the perpetrators to justice. But it wasn’t clear if he was acknowledging possible killings at the hands of his forces or laying the blame on former regime elements.In an apparent bid to reassure the nation, he appealed for calm on Sunday and repeated calls for Assad loyalists to lay down their arms.“We must preserve national unity and civil peace,” Mr. al-Shara said at a mosque in Damascus, according to video that circulated online. More

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      How Might the Rebels Govern Syria? Their Ruling History in Idlib Offers Clues

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      The Islamist rebels who ousted Syria’s dictator ran a pragmatic and disciplined administration in the territory they controlled. They also jailed their critics.Every fall, when farmers across the rolling, red dirt hills of Idlib Province in northern Syria harvest their olive crops, they routinely find at least one representative of the local tax authority stationed at any oil press.The tax collector takes at least 5 percent of the oil, and farmers grouse that there are no exceptions, even in lean harvest years.The collectors work for the civilian government established under Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, the rebel movement that just spearheaded the swift overthrow of the 54-year Assad dynasty. The Islamist group has administered much of opposition-held Idlib Province since 2017.Measures like the olive oil tax, introduced in 2019, have prompted protests and even occasional armed clashes and arrests.Yet the Syrian Salvation Government, as the Idlib administration was known, persisted. It taxed goods entering its territory and generated revenue by selling fuel and running a telecom company. It also controlled the local economy through licensing regulation programs that looked a lot like a conventional government’s and proved that it was fairly adept at managing those finances to build up its military operations and provide civil services.The portrait of the rebel group detailed in this article was gleaned from interviews with experts, representatives of humanitarian or other organizations working in the territory under its control, local residents and reports by the United Nations or think tanks.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      With al-Assad Gone, Syrians Search Prisons for Traces of Their Loved Ones

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      Her brother was pulled from his car at a military checkpoint nearly a decade ago, her brother-in-law dragged from his house by the police. Two of her cousins were arrested near the airport in the Syrian capital, Damascus. She said she never had heard from any of them again.So after the fall of President Bashar al-Assad on Sunday, Ghusun Juma, 35, began a quest for answers that led her to an underground prison in one of Syria’s most notorious detention centers, a drab collection of buildings in southeastern Damascus.“I am looking to see if there is anything that belonged to my brother, his ID card, or something with his name on it,” she said, guiding herself through a dark, dank cell block with a cellphone flashlight. “I have been looking since the first day, but I haven’t found anything anywhere.”Mr. al-Assad’s ouster, and his troops’ abandonment of their bases as rebels stormed through Damascus, has exposed the black boxes of one of the Arab world’s most repressive regimes. While some Syrians have wandered through his luxurious palace, many more have combed through the vast network of detention centers whose repression helped keep him in power.An untold number of Syrians disappeared into the maw of that security apparatus over the decades. As the rebels broke into prisons and freed prisoners over the last few weeks, many Syrians hoped that their missing relatives would soon return home.Ghusun Juma, 35, right, searching underground cells at Branch 235, which was also known as Palestine Branch.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Israel Strikes Military Assets Across Syria to Keep Them From Rebels

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      The Israeli military appeared to have unleashed more airstrikes across Syria overnight into Tuesday in an attempt to destroy weapons, aircraft and military facilities before the rebels controlling much of the country could take possession of them.Photographs from Syria on Tuesday showed sunken boats at a shipyard, crumbled buildings and the charred remains of a science research center that had been linked to the country’s chemical weapons program, according to the news agencies that distributed the images.It was unclear what had caused the damage in the photographs, but Israeli officials said that their country was striking weapon stockpiles in Syria, including chemical weapons and long-range missiles and rockets, to prevent Syria’s new leaders from potentially attacking Israel in the future.Gideon Saar, Israel’s foreign minister, told reporters on Monday that the leaders of Syria’s rebels “are people with an extreme ideology of radical Islam.” Israeli forces are destroying the weapons “in order that they don’t fall in the hands of extremists,” he added.The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, an independent group based in Britain that has tracked the civil war in Syria for years, said that it had documented 322 Israeli strikes in Syria since Sunday, when President Bashar al-Assad fled the country. It said the strikes had targeted “warehouses, aircraft squadrons, radars, military signal stations, and numerous weapons and ammunition depots,” including some as recently as Tuesday morning.The group also said that Israeli forces had pushed further into Syrian territory, past a buffer zone set up by the United Nations.Avichay Adraee, an Israeli military spokesman, said on social media on Tuesday that Israeli forces “are present inside the buffer zone and at defensive points close to the border in order to protect the Israeli border.” He added that reports that the military was “advancing or approaching Damascus are completely incorrect.”Israeli military vehicles entering the buffer zone with Syria from the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights on Tuesday.Jalaa Marey/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesThe region between Israel and Syria has been fought over for decades. Israel captured the Golan Heights during a war in 1967 and annexed most of it in 1981. Most of the world views this area as Israeli-occupied Syrian territory. Beyond the Golan Heights, into Syrian territory, there is a 155-square-mile demilitarized buffer zone that has been patrolled by U.N. troops since the Arab-Israeli war of 1973, also known as the Yom Kippur War.Israeli ground forces advanced into that zone on Saturday, their first overt entry since 1973. They took control of the summit of Mount Hermon in Syria, a strategic point to oversee the region, as well as other important locations to give them control of the area, Israeli officials said. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Monday that he had ordered the incursion to protect Israeli territory.“For the time being, we are there,” Mr. Saar said. “But we define these steps as limited and temporary.”Aaron Boxerman More

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      Syrians, in Shock and With Some Unease, Celebrate the Fall of al-Assad

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      A day after the regime of President Bashar al-Assad fell, civilians poured into the streets of Damascus, weeping in disbelief. Many sought word of relatives held in a notorious prison on the outskirts of the city.Syrian security checkpoints sat empty on Monday across Damascus. Abandoned tanks were scattered across the roads, along with stray pieces of military uniforms stripped off by soldiers when opposition forces stormed into the city a day earlier.Rebels with rifles slung over their shoulders drove around, many seemingly shocked at just how quickly they had ousted Syria’s long-entrenched president, Bashar al-Assad. Damascus residents, too, were walking around the city’s streets in a state of disbelief.Some rushed to a notorious prison on the outskirts of Damascus, the capital, desperate to find loved ones who had disappeared under Mr. al-Assad’s brutal reign. Others clambered on top of cars and screamed curses at the Assad family, words that days ago could have meant a death sentence.By day’s end, with Mr. al-Assad and his family having fled on a plane to his ally Russia, thousands of Syrians had converged at Umayyad Square in the city center to revel in the fall of the regime and their newfound, if uncertain, sense of freedom.“We’re shocked; all of us are just shocked,” one woman, Shahnaz Sezad, 50, said. “It’s as if we’re all coming back to life after a nightmare.”She watched, tears welling up, as a scene unimaginable just days ago played out in front of her. One rebel shouted into a microphone: “The Syrian people want to execute Bashar! The Syrian people want to execute Bashar!” A deafening “paw-paw-paw” of gunfire sounded as others shot into the air.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Crowds Throng to Syria’s Sednaya Prison to Find Relatives and Friends

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      Crowds descended on a prison on the outskirts of Damascus, the Syrian capital, on Monday, desperate to learn the fate of friends and relatives detained at a place that symbolized terror and death under the regime of President Bashar al-Assad.Some hailed taxis or waited for buses from the city to the prison, Sednaya, which opened over the weekend as Mr. al-Assad fell. Others packed into cars, inching through traffic. Many appeared conflicted by hope and dread amid the euphoria that has gripped Damascus since Mr. al-Assad fled to Russia.“Seizing the city is a joy — we are joyous,” said one rebel fighter, Mohammad Bakir, who sat in the back of a mud-caked car en route to the prison, his rifle tucked between his knees. He said he had not heard from his mother, brother and cousin since they disappeared in 2012 after they protested against the government and were presumably detained.“But the real victory will be when I find my family,” Mr. Bakir, 42, said above the din of car horns.Prisons were central to Mr. al-Assad’s ability to crush the civilian uprising that began in 2011 and the rebellion that followed. He set up an industrial-scale system of arbitrary arrests and torture prisons, according to reports by human rights groups.More than 130,000 people were subjected to arbitrary arrest and detention by the government, according to a report in August by the Syrian Network for Human Rights, a nonprofit, which began its count when the conflict started in 2011. The network said that more than 15,000 people had died “due to torture” by government forces from 2011 to July this year.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      How Syria’s Rebels Took Damascus, Captured on Video

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      A brazen nighttime prison release. Presidential posters set on fire. Children playing in the halls of a building once controlled by the former regime.The fall of Damascus, Syria’s capital, happened quickly and dramatically, and much of what we know about the end of Bashar al-Assad’s reign in the country was captured on people’s phones for the world to see. Footage began emerging on social media at 4 a.m. local time on Sunday. It showed the rapid advance of a rebel army that took control of Damascus in just a few hours.Despite reports that government forces were preparing to defend the capital, the Syrian army was nowhere to be found. One video from Damascus showed a military checkpoint that had been abandoned. Inside, what looked like army uniforms littered the floor of the building, which was plastered with large posters of Mr. al-Assad.Associated PressOn the northern outskirts of the city, rebel forces moved swiftly to take control of Sednaya prison, a notorious government complex known for torturing and executing political prisoners. Videos showed groups of men walking through city streets at night, reportedly after being freed from the prison.Other videos posted online showed scenes of joy and disbelief as dozens of people were released from the prison complex. On social media, Syrians posted photos of loved ones who had been detained at the prison, hoping someone might identify them and confirm that they were free.Operations Room to Conquer Damascus, via ReutersAs news began to circulate that the rebels had arrived in the capital, residents began streaming into Umayyad Square in central Damascus. Men gathered around a tank and climbed on top of it, raising their hands in the air as a group of onlookers clapped and played music. The square was soon packed with dozens of cars, and sounds of celebratory gunfire filled the air.By dawn, many were speculating that Syria’s president had fled the country. Crowds outside the Dar al-Assad Center for Culture and Arts stomped on burning images of Mr. al-Assad and tried to topple a statue of his father, Hafez al-Assad. Unsuccessful in taking down the statue, they left a trash can on its head.Hours later, inside Mr. al-Assad’s former seat of power, families wandered through the presidential palace as if they were visiting a museum, smiling and posing for photographs in the halls. Some even collected furniture and dishes as souvenirs.Associated PressBy Sunday afternoon, videos shared on social media showed the rebel leader Abu Mohammad al-Jolani entering the Umayyad mosque in Damascus. Masked security guards escorted him through the crowd as residents battled to try to get a photo with him.In a statement, Mr. al-Jolani described the rebel takeover as a victory for the entire nation.“The future is ours,” he said. More