I’m receiving a lot of messages asking why we only wrote about Assad’s jails after the regime fell - so for the avoidance of doubt, we didn’t. For context on what happened in Sednaya, here is our investigation into executions there as the pace accelerated: washingtonpost.com/graphics/2018/… Syria’s military hospitals were used for as part of the mass detention and killing engine too. Doctors beat the sick detainees. Sometimes they executed them.washingtonpost.com/world/middle_e…

The first evacuees from Mariupol’s besieged and bombarded Azovstal steelworks have arrived to safety in Zaporizhzhia flanked by ambulances and UN vehicles. From their cold & fetid bunker, deep underground, the survivors of Mariupol’s Azovstal steelworks feared what wreckage would greet them if they made it out alive. As they staggered upstairs and into the light, the scene, they said, was like a nightmare. washingtonpost.com/world/2022/05/…

Hundreds more Iraqis repatriated from al-Hol, the Syrian detention camp housing tens of thousands of people who lived inside the Islamic State's caliphate. shafaq.com/en/Iraq-News/A… Iraqis repatriated from al-Hol were displaced prior to final battle for ISIS territory & have been 'screened' by Iraqi security forces. But even bringing backs 100s (out of 10,000s) has been politically thorny & taken years of negotiation. They now live in a closed Iraqi camp.

(1) In Syria, children under the age or 9 have known no life outside of the war. @RESCUEorg says today that children in Idlib are suffering from "staggering" levels of emotional distress. (2) Parents describe being at their wits end. Orphanages house a growing number of children, and play music to drown out the shelling. @RESCUEorg's survey of 248 parents or other caregivers revealed: rescue.org/press-release/…

Nearly 600,000 Syrians flee offensive in Idlib as “humanitarian catastrophe” looms. It’s already one of the largest mass flights of Syria’s entire war. More than 280,000 more may need to run soon. But where do they have left to go? By ⁦@LizSly⁩. washingtonpost.com/world/middle_e… More than half are children, most of the rest are women, & they are sleeping on roadsides or camping under trees in muddy fields because there is no accommodation left. Local homes & camps are full. Not enough tents as cold bites. People are burning their own clothes for heat.

2019 was the year that ISIS’ caliphate fell, and the international community largely avoided taking responsibility for an unprecedented disaster in Syria’s desert: effectively, an internment camp for the women & who left the caliphate in its final weeks. 10,000 are foreigners. Conditions are dire. Hundreds of infants have died. In the foreigners annexe, the most radical women have imposed hardline punishments on others they deem impious: washingtonpost.com/world/at-a-spr…

Situation in northeast Syria devolving quickly: 100,000 civilians on the move, Turkish-backed forces pushing on key border town, SDF and a local medic report that U.S.-backed forces have pulled reinforcements from the al-Hol camp. Gut-wrenching stories from Syria as 100,000 displaced as Turkish offensive rolls on. One woman said she spends daylight hours combing morgues for her uncle, then hides in a packed-out apartment at night. Another said adults too scared to calm their children as bombing rings out.

Remarkable numbers of civilians leaving ISIS-held Baghouz in recent days. @theIRC says around 1,000 arrived earlier today at the already-packed al-Hol camp. In addition, 3,500 arrived Monday, 6,000 over the weekend. washingtonpost.com/world/as-the-b… The scale of the influx has meant that 2,000 are currently having to sleep rough in an arrivals area while they await security screening. The conditions we saw there were dire - families sleeping on concrete floors amid a thick stench of sickness and defecation.

As Storm Norma batters Lebanon, spare a thought for the 1.5 million Syrian refugees here. Aid groups are trying to persuade people to leave tents that are now under water -- but many are resisting, fearing the structures will be demolished before they return. /1 Families who left houses, jobs and lives in Syria are now stuck in tin-roofed tents filling up with rainwater across Lebanon. The Lebanese Red Cross said that yesterday alone it had to rescue 500 people. dailystar.com.lb/News/Lebanon-N… /2