@mateonelson.bsky.social
English Editor at Syria Direct @syriadirect.bsky.social Arabic ➡️ English translator
Dust from a recent examination spots a table inside the Syrian Identification Center’s preliminary analysis room in Damascus, 27/11/2025 . Reference books sit on the table, while an anatomical model of the human skeleton stands beside the table.
🧵 As dozens of mass graves come to light, Syrians face the daunting task of identifying the dead and bringing closure to the families of some of the country’s more than 160,000 missing people.
🔗 bit.ly/4p6K3H2
‘Two prisons’: Freed from detention, Syrian women face a second trial
✍️ Bushra Alzoubi
Dancers practice at Welat Art House in Qamishli, northeastern Syria, 23/5/2025. The four women extend their left arms forward, as if in the moment after releasing an invisible bowstring. Their faces are determined, their gazes fixed on a point in the distance. Thin fabric curtains hang over the windows of the practice space, which has a hardwood floor, whitewashed mudbrick walls and a wooden ceiling.
🧵 In northeastern Syria, a growing community of artists—dancers, musicians, filmmakers—is fighting to preserve the region’s diverse heritage and sustain more than a decade of cultural revival.
🔗 bit.ly/4pcn3XE
People watch as the trial of 14 suspects accused of participating in violence and massacres on Syria’s Alawite-majority coast earlier this year begins at the Palace of Justice in Aleppo city, 18/11/2025. Judge Zakariya Bakkar, a man with gray hair, speaks into a microphone. A Syrian flag appears at the left of the picture, while the foreground shows cameras and the spectators' backs.
🧵 The first trial of hundreds of suspects accused of involvement in killings on Syria’s Alawite-majority coast began on Tuesday, marking the start of a closely watched and unprecedented accountability process.
🔗 bit.ly/47MsF4P
People watch as the sun sets behind the Statue of Liberty—historically a symbol of immigration to the United States—in New York, 3/7/2025. Rays of light peek through the cloudy sky, which is a deep orange color that is also reflected on the surface of the water between two figures in silhouette and the statue in the distance, also in silhouette.
🧵 The Trump administration’s abrupt termination of Syrians’ Temporary Protected Status has left thousands scrambling for solutions before a November 21 deadline to self-deport or become undocumented.
🔗 bit.ly/4ogHqCE
Dueling with drought: How can Daraa farmers adapt to a changing climate?
✍️ @walid-alnofal.bsky.social
"The first thing that the interim government in Syria must do is to end enforced disappearance and unlawful detention, and stop the sectarian violence ... Start focusing on achieving the truth, justice and peace that we need to move our country forward."
www.theguardian.com/global-devel...
A man crouches next to a pipe as water bursts from a new solar-powered well in the east Daraa town of al-Musayfra. Funded by a local donor, it was drilled under the supervision of provincial authorities, 7/9/2025. In the background, a mosque with a light blue dome and a few low, square buildings can be seen.
🧵 Historic drought, degraded infrastructure and unregulated well drilling drain Daraa’s water as authorities struggle to respond to the country’s worst water crisis in decades.
🔗 bit.ly/4nBa4yh
Egyptian authorities announced the presidential pardon of prominent activist Alaa Abd el-Fattah after six years in prison, according to his lawyer Khaled Ali and an announcement by state TV.
22.09.2025 12:37 — 👍 96 🔁 26 💬 1 📌 18
When Assad’s security state collapsed, locked doors opened, spilling decades of secrets.
Among them: 100s of stolen children, hidden in orphanages & used to blackmail parents. We’ve done the deepest dive yet into this cruel system. Here’s what we found 🧵
www.lighthousereports.com/investigatio...
In nearly 23 months, at least 210 journalists have been killed by the Israeli army in Gaza, according to @rsf.org. More have been injured and face constant threats to their lives for doing their jobs. This is a direct attack on press freedom and the right to information. Learn more:
01.09.2025 12:14 — 👍 2 🔁 1 💬 0 📌 0
The text "At the rate journalists are being killed in Gaza by the Israeli army, there will soon be no one left to keep you informed. #ProtectJournalistsInGaza #LetReportersIntoGaza" appears against a background of a dim black image of a cloud of smoke rising over buildings in Gaza.
Syria Direct joins with more than 250 media outlets across the world to condemn the Israeli army's killings of journalists in Gaza. We also call on the Israeli authorities to allow independent access for the international press in the Gaza Strip.
01.09.2025 12:14 — 👍 2 🔁 1 💬 1 📌 0
Recently @prismreports.org has published many dispatches from Gaza, written by Palestinians surviving the genocide. All of them are heartbreaking, necessary reads. This one, written by Logain Hamdan about kids eating "ice cream" flavored with antibiotics, will stick with me for the rest of my life.
25.08.2025 16:55 — 👍 100 🔁 90 💬 2 📌 8
Bilal Abu Saleh, 37, an organic and heirloom seed farmer, looks off into the distance as he stands on his farm in al-Buweida al-Saghira, southern Aleppo, 28/6/2025. He wears a red and blue checkered shirt, the sleeves rolled up to his elbows, and light blue jeans. The ground under his feet is dry, and drip irrigation tubing runs along rows of green plants.
🧵 After years in exile, organic farmers Bilal and Assia Abu Saleh returned home to a looted house and parched land that will be a challenge to cultivate. Yet they have a clear goal: to rebuild Syria for their children and lead it toward food sovereignty.
🔗 bit.ly/4mRqhOL
A recently returned Tremseh villager walks through an orchard with his young son, on his way to tend to his beehives, 19/7/2025
🧵 In Tremseh, an idyllic village in northern Hama with a bloody past, thousands of displaced residents have found their way home. Reunited with old friends, they are working to rebuild a community and heal old scars.
🔗 bit.ly/47jFW4R
This is not just another crime committed by a serial killer of press freedom. It is the fact that over more than 200 Palestinian journalists have been killed by the ongoing genocide. This cycle will be repeated so long the world, including their colleagues, will not do better to stop this.
10.08.2025 22:18 — 👍 23 🔁 9 💬 1 📌 0
Barely an hour ago, Palestinian journalist Anas Al-Sharif warned us all:
“If this madness doesn’t end, Gaza will be reduced to ruins, its people’s voices silenced, their faces erased — and history will remember you as silent witnesses to a genocide you chose not to stop.”
Israel just killed him.
Druze and Bedouin families in southern Syria are united in pain, if little else, reeling with uncertainty and loss after days of deadly violence. Anagha Subhash Nair reports from Suwayda and Daraa:
syriadirect.org/deep-grief-f...
An aerial view of Druze-majority Suwayda city in southern Syria, 18/7/2025
🧵 Activists in Suwayda who were once open to the Damascus government weigh in on how their views have changed following a wave of sectarian violence—and whether any path forward remains.
🔗 bit.ly/4fb5NhB
Here's a big-picture geopolitical thread on Israel's war on Iran - its possibilities, impossibilities, dynamics, and delusions. My goal is to give you a full big-picture view in one place, which is why this is a long thread. If you prefer drip-fed updates, skip this thread.
19.06.2025 10:53 — 👍 180 🔁 88 💬 4 📌 40
A farmer (an older man with short, white hair) walks in front of a combine harvester reaping his wheat in the countryside of Adawan, a town in the west of Syria’s southern Daraa province, 3/6/2025 (Emad Albasiri/Syria Direct)
🧵 Syria’s worst drought in decades has wiped out rain-fed crops and diminished yields across the country, devastating farmers and raising the risk of food shortages.
🔗 bit.ly/4liq2M9
A man walks inside Adra Central Prison in Reef Dimashq after Syrian opposition forces took control of it and released those held inside, 16/12/2024. He carries a flashlight that barely illuminates the space around him. Some light can be seen through a barred window, while the dim outlines of bars, floor tiles and doors can be seen in a space that is mostly black.
🧵 Dealing with the legacy of Syria’s prisons and security branches as atrocity sites is a collective moral responsibility and part of the fight for memory, “the last bulwark against repeating the past.”
🔗 bit.ly/4l8dXtC
Devastated by war, farmers return life to Syria’s ‘oasis’
✍️ Hanna Davis
syriadirect.org/devastated-b...
“The revolution in Syria can be described as a revolution of the countryside,” writer and environmental researcher Muhamad Fares said, with towns like Douma and Darayya emerging as epicenters of resistance. “Damascus’s countryside has paid a much higher price."
24.03.2025 17:42 — 👍 0 🔁 1 💬 1 📌 0
A view of destroyed buildings in Jobar, in the East Ghouta countryside of Damascus, 10/2/2025. In the foreground, a barren wasteland includes rubble, some leafless shrubs and the figure of a single man standing on the dirt. In the near distance, bombed-out buildings stand, their windows blackened and empty. In the far distance, the slopes of two mountains can be seen through a thick, brownish haze in the air.
🧵 Years of war, mismanagement and drought wreaked havoc on the fertile Ghouta countryside surrounding Damascus. Farmers face a host of challenges as they return to care for their land.
🔗 bit.ly/4kW9JoN
A view of al-Karama Square, in Syria’s southern, Druze-majority Suwayda city, which was the epicenter of a nonviolent protest movement against deposed president Bashar al-Assad for more than a year before his fall. A white cloth banner in Arabic hangs to one side, next to an artistic rendering of an arm and hand holding up two fingers in a victory sign. "Freedom" is written on the palm of the hand in Arabic, while the arm is painted with the Syrian revolution flag.
🧵 Factions in Suwayda province are split on whether to merge with Damascus. One side—aligned with Druze spiritual leader Sheikh Hikmat al-Hijri—is opposed, while the other—including the powerful Men of Dignity—calls for opening to Damascus and joining its institutions.
🔗 bit.ly/3FyGath
Sara (a pseudonym) fled Baniyas with her family on March 8, the day after gunmen broke into her neighbor’s home and killed her and her six children. “Everything was falling apart," she said. “Are these children remnants of the regime? Are they guilty?"
14.03.2025 16:18 — 👍 0 🔁 1 💬 1 📌 0Roughly 9,000 Syrians have fled to Lebanon since March 6, UNHCR Lebanon spokesperson Lisa Abou Khaled said. Most have settled in 17 villages across Akkar governorate, while many have settled in Tripoli’s Alawite-majority Jabal Mohsen neighborhood.
14.03.2025 16:18 — 👍 0 🔁 1 💬 1 📌 0
