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This week, rumors were rife that members of the Islamic Front were behind the kidnapping of prominent activist Razan Zeitouneh, her husband and two colleagues, who were taken by masked gunmen from an office in the Damascus neighborhood of Douma.
ALEPPO — Wintery cold and record snowfall have threatened the lives of Syrians living in unheated homes in Aleppo.
GAZIANTEP — Every morning Dr. Younes heads to the pharmacy next to his home in this Turkish border town, where there is rising demand for Arabic-speaking pharmacists as ailing Syrian refugees, unable to speak anything but Arabic, pour across the border.
This week activists said more than 100 civilians had been killed by air strikes in the opposition-held areas of Aleppo, an escalation in fighting in a city where rebels and government forces have been at a stalemate for months. .
Does the key to solving the Syrian conflict lie in strategies for peace?
ALEPPO — Earlier this month, as fighting escalated here and government forces continued their aerial bombardments, Abu Ahmad searched for the remains of relatives who had been killed in an air raid.
As soon as they got the green light from their smuggler, the family from Tal Rifaat, a town near the Turkey-Syria border, knew it was time to go.
BAALBEK — Twenty-eight-year-old Serena was once set to inherit a sizable chunk of land from her grandfather in the southern Lebanese city of Tyre. Today that land is unrecognizable, as it’s now part of the sprawling Burj al-Shamali Palestinian camp. .
The kidnapping of Razan Zeitouneh this week was a shock and blow to what’s left of the original Syrian uprising.
ARSAL — In the midst of snowstorm Alexa, tens of thousands of unregistered Syrian refugees in this Lebanese border town have been left outdoors.
Civilians, activists and opposition fighters in Raqqa say they are facing an increasing level of brutality from the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), the al-Qaida linked group whose often violent governing tactics in the city are starting to alienate constituents there.
Early this week, a car bomb detonated near a paramilitary building in a Kurdish-majority village in northeast Hassekeh province.
On Nov. 22, seven of the largest non-extremist fighting brigades in Syria came together to form the Islamic Front.
Mohammad, 25, is a Syrian soldier who supports the rebel opposition from his barracks in Bashar al-Assad’s army.
This week, the Syrian army secured the much-contested area of Qalamoun near the main highway between Homs and Damascus.
Earlier this month, Turkish authorities moved 65 refugee families from a makeshift camp in a parking lot to a government-run refugee camp outside of Gaziantep.
DAMASCUS — For women from conservative Syrian communities, war has had an unexpected consequence: the freedom to ignore longstanding conventions and traditional gender roles, and they have begun to rely on themselves. .
As part of our effort to highlight civilian stories, below is a conversation between Syria Deeply and a young Syrian relief worker. Amer, 30, was a lawyer before he joined a team of relief workers in Hatay, Turkey, last spring, making daily trips to deliver aid across the Syrian border.
In Syria, you can chart the course of the uprising through the journey of one man: Osama Mansour al-Hilali.
With a series of battlefield gains and a consensus that it’s generally ahead in the fight, the regime of President Bashar al-Assad was vocally confident this week that it would keep the reigns of power.
U.S. officials said this week that the Pentagon is rigging a 647-foot cargo ship with high-tech equipment in order to destroy hundreds of tons of Syrian chemical weapons at sea. .
RAMTHA, JORDAN // The first case taken on by the Islamic court in Deraa was a trivial affair, especially viewed against the backdrop of a devastating conflict that has killed more than 100,000 people.
For months, government and opposition forces have been fighting for Qalamoun, a mountainous stretch of land near Damascus. Situated along a highway that runs from Homs to Damascus, it’s a key strategic point for both sides, and for the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah, which has been suffering casualties as it fights alongside Bashar al-Assad’s troops.
DAMASCUS COUNTRYSIDE — As she cooks rice on the stove in her home in the suburb of Douma in eastern Ghouta, Um Khaled recalls the fateful night her husband and son were taken from her.
BEIRUT — When Syrian rebels first captured Raqqa in March, seizing the northern city from President Bashar al-Assad’s regime seemed enough for them. They didn’t interfere with citizens’ private lives, said Amir, a Syrian from the city.
This week, Israel announced that it would be sending humanitarian aid across the border to civilians in Syria, a bitter enemy. “We can’t sit by and watch the humanitarian difficulties on the other side,” said Defense Minister Moshe Yaalon.
ALEPPO — With the emergence of opposition-held districts and territories held by the Free Syrian Army, newly “liberated” zones became a shelter for media activists and journalists — a place where they could work freely, away from Syrian intelligence.
Many teachers are among those who have fled Syria as the country’s conflict worsens. But in the Damascus suburbs, a group of activists are working to fill the knowledge gap with a new education center. .
Last week, the Euro Mediterranean Human Rights Network released a report that said more than 6,000 women had been raped since the start of the Syrian conflict.
The flow of foreign fighters to Syria has become a regional concern: the number of fighters from Saudi Arabia, Libya, Tunisia and Iraq has spiked, as groups like ISIS and Jabhat al-Nusra have consolidated their power and expanded their fighting forces.
It’s been an eventful week in and around Syria. The regime has been taking back bits of terrain, including the strategic town of Qalamoun. Where the regime isn’t in control – in the northern parts of the country – al-Qaida is gaining ground and growing more influential. .
Today, the United Nations released its new report on the crisis facing Syria’s refugee children, the first such in-depth report it has conducted since the start of the conflict.
A second round of peace talks is set to begin on Jan. 22 in Geneva. The talks, brokered by the U.N. and supported by the West, come after the first set of talks failed to negotiate a truce, or even concessions, between the Assad government and its opposition.
RAQQA — Last week, activists in this Islamist-held provincial capital said the government had drastically cut their electricity supply.
EHSIM, IDLIB — Khaled, who uses a wheelchair, remembers how his daughters used to ask him for piggyback rides around their house. That was before he lost his feet to shrapnel.
On Friday, Syria’s six largest Islamist rebel groups declared a new Islamic Front, forming the largest opposition alliance thus far in the conflict. Syria’s rebel fighters have tried to unite before, with dismal results.
TARTUS — In a small village on the Syrian coast, a shopkeeper in her 60s tends to her customers. She wears the shimmering black abaya prevalent in the countryside, wisps of gray hair protruding from her headscarf.
Last week, four British nationals were reported killed while fighting in Syria. The deaths raised questions of exactly how many Western jihad are currently working on the ground with ISIS, Jabhat al-Nusra and other extremist groups.
EHSIM, IDLIB PROVINCE — A five-minute delay on the walk over was just enough time for Um Abed, a 38-year-old widow, to lose her usual spot in her town’s long milk line. Everyone here is desperate for milk from the town’s only living cow.
DEIR EZZOR — Abed Rahman al-Khodor is known across this eastern city for his perseverance in providing the most basic edible essential, bread, to its most vulnerable residents.
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