DAMASCUS: They came from all over Syria, tens of thousands. The first place they rushed to after the fall of their longtime tormentor, former President Bashar Assad, was here: Saydnaya Prison, a place so notorious for its horrors it was long known as “the slaughterhouse.”
For the past two days, all have been looking for signs of loved ones who disappeared years or even decades ago into the secretive, sprawling prison just outside Damascus.
But hope gave way to despair Monday. People opened the heavy iron doors lining the hallways to find cells inside empty. With sledgehammers, shovels and drills, men pounded holes in floors and walls, looking for what they believed were secret dungeons, or chasing sounds they thought they heard from underground. They found nothing.
Insurgents freed dozens of people from the Saydnaya military prison on Sunday when Damascus fell. Since then, almost no one has been found.
“Where is everyone? Where are everyone’s children? Where are they?” said Ghada Assad, breaking down in tears.
She had rushed from her Damascus home to the prison on the capital’s outskirts, hoping to find her brother. He was detained in 2011, the year that protests first erupted against the former president’s rule – before they turned into a long, grueling civil war. She didn’t know why he was arrested.
“My heart has been burned over my brother. For 13 years, I kept looking for him,” she said. When insurgents last week seized Aleppo — her original hometown — at the start of their swiftly victorious offensive, “I prayed that they would reach Damascus just so they can open up this prison,” she said.
Civil defense officials helping in the search were as confused as the families over why no further inmates were being found. It appeared fewer were held here in recent weeks, they said.
But few were giving up, a sign of how powerfully Saydnaya looms in the minds of Syrians as the heart of Assad’s brutal police state. The sense of loss over the missing — and the sudden hope they might be found — brought a kind of dark unity among Syrians from across the country.
During Assad’s rule and particularly after the 2011 protests began, any hint of dissent could land someone in Saydnaya. Few ever emerged.
In 2017, Amnesty International estimated that 10,000-20,000 people were being held there at the time “from every sector of society.” It said they were effectively slated for “extermination.”
Thousands were killed in frequent mass executions, Amnesty reported, citing testimony from freed prisoners and prison officials. Prisoners were subjected to constant torture, intense beatings and rape. Almost daily, guards did rounds of the cells to collect bodies of inmates who had died overnight from injuries, disease or starvation. Some inmates fell into psychosis and starved themselves, the human rights group said.
“There is not a home, there is not a woman in Syria who didn’t lose a brother, a child or a husband,” said Khairiya Ismail, 54. Two of her sons were detained in the early days of the protests against Assad – one of them when he came to visit her after she herself had been detained.
Ismail, accused of helping her son evade military service, spent eight months in Adra prison, northeast of Damascus. “They detained everyone.”
An estimated 150,000 people were detained or went missing in Syria since 2011 — and tens of thousands of them are believed to have gone through Saydnaya.
“People expected many more to be here ... They are clinging to the slightest sliver of hope,” said Ghayath Abu Al-Dahab, a spokesman for the White Helmets, the search and rescue group that operated in rebel-held areas throughout the war.
Five White Helmet teams, with two canine teams, came to Saydnaya to help the search. They even brought in the prison electrician, who had the floor plan, and went through every shaft, vent and sewage opening. So far, there were no answers, Abu Al-Dahab said.
He said the civil defense had documents showing more than 3,500 people were in Saydnaya until three months before the fall of Damascus. But the number may have been less by the time the prison was stormed, he said.
“There are other prisons,” he said. “The regime had turned all of Syria into a big prison.” Detainees were held in security agencies, military facilities, government offices and even universities, he added.
Around the Y-shaped main building of the prison, everyone kept trying, convinced they could find some hidden chamber with detainees, dead or alive.
Dozens of men tried to force a metal gate open until they realized it led only to more cells upstairs. Others asked the insurgents guarding the prison to use their rifle to lever open a closed door.
A handful of men were gathered, excavating what looked like a sewage opening in a basement. Others dug up electrical wiring, thinking it might lead to hidden underground chambers.
In a scene throughout the day, hundreds cheered as men with sledgehammers and shovels battered a huge column in the building’s atrium, thinking they had found a secret cell. Hundreds ran to see. But there was nothing, and tears and loud sighs replaced the celebrations.
In the wards, lines of cells were empty. Some had blankets, a few plastic pots or a few names scribbled on walls. Documents, some with names of prisoners, were left strewn in the yard, the kitchen and elsewhere. Families scoured them for their loved ones’ names.
A brief protest broke out in the prison yard, when a group of men began chanting: “Bring us the prison warden.” Calls on social media urged anyone with information of the secret cells of the prison to come forth and help.
Firas Al-Halabi, one of the prisoners freed when insurgents first broke into Saydnaya, was back on Monday visiting. Those searching flocked around him, whispering names of relatives to see if he met them.
Al-Halabi, who had been an army conscript when he was arrested, said he spent four years in a cell with 20 others.
His only food was a quarter loaf of bread and some burghul. He suffered from tuberculosis because of the cell conditions. He was tortured by electrocution, he said, and the beatings were constant.
“During our time in the yard, there was beating. When going to the bathroom, there was beating. If we sat on the floor, we got beaten. If you look at the light, you are beaten,” he said. He was once thrown into solitary for simply praying in his cell.
“Everything is considered a violation,” he said. “Your life is one big violation to them.”
He said that in his first year in the prison guards would call out hundreds of names over the course of days. One officer told him it was for executions.
When he was freed Sunday, he thought he was dreaming. “We never thought we would see this moment. We thought we would be executed, one by one.”
Noha Qweidar and her cousin sat in the yard on Monday, taking a rest from searching. Their husbands were detained in 2013 and 2015. Qweidar said she had received word from other inmates that her husband was killed in a summary execution in prison.
But she couldn’t know for sure. Prisoners reported dead in the past have turned up alive.
“I heard that (he was executed) but I still have hope he is alive.”
Just before sundown on Monday, rescue teams brought in an excavator to dig deeper.
But late at night, the White Helmets announced the end of their search, saying in a statement they had found no hidden areas in the facility.
“We share the profound disappointment of the families of the thousands who remain missing and whose fates are unknown.”
Thousands scour Syria’s most horrific prison but find no sign of their loved ones
https://arab.news/4zadu
Thousands scour Syria’s most horrific prison but find no sign of their loved ones
Lebanese president holds talks with Emirati delegation in Beirut
- Nawaf Salam in Dubai says reform and sovereignty require arms exclusivity
BEIRUT: A delegation from the UAE arrived in Beirut on Tuesday to review the needs and priorities of the Lebanese state, following the results of the Lebanese-Emirati summit that took place at the end of April in Abu Dhabi.
President Joseph Aoun, who met with the delegation, praised the “interest of the President of the United Arab Emirates, Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al-Nahyan, in supporting Lebanon.”
The delegation was led by Abdulla Nasser Lootah, deputy minister of cabinet affairs for competitiveness and knowledge exchange.
During the meeting, Aoun said, according to his media office: “The current phase necessitates the expansion of cooperation and the deepening of exchange and integration in education, governance, and public sector management, extending to private sector initiatives and various investments, particularly in knowledge economies, digitization, and advanced technology, where the expertise of our brothers in the United Arab Emirates is significant in these areas.”
Lootah outlined the delegation’s mission to “define partnership frameworks and facilitate data exchange,” emphasizing that “the UAE will stand with Lebanon in realizing the aspirations articulated by President Aoun during his discussions with our leadership. We are committed to delivering comprehensive support that strengthens bilateral cooperation, guided by extensive facilitation measures and leadership’s directives.”
An extensive technical session between Lebanese and Emirati officials addressed key modernization priorities.
Presidential sources indicated the talks concentrated on “collaborative mechanisms for streamlining administrative processes, advancing digital transformation, strengthening legal frameworks, and improving public sector efficiency through bilateral knowledge transfer and technical assistance programs.”
Concurrently, Prime Minister Nawaf Salam addressed the Dubai Media Summit, declaring Lebanon’s emergence “from the debris of multiple crises, determined to reclaim its identity, voice, and statehood after years of debilitating sectarian divisions, conflicts, and external interference.”
Salam outlined his administration’s core principle: “Our governmental approach links reform with sovereignty, necessitating weapons monopolization under state authority. Lebanon must escape the arms duality that created decision-making duality and undermined our national project.
“Our Lebanese vision represents practical policy, not idealistic thinking,” Salam said. “We envision a constitutional state governed by institutions rather than sectarian allocations and patronage networks — a sovereign entity free from external control, a decision-making state rather than a battleground for regional conflicts.”
The prime minister concluded with Lebanon's strategic positioning: “We seek a Lebanon controlling its destiny in both peace and war, firmly anchored in Arab identity while maintaining global openness, serving as an East-West communication bridge.”
Salam believes that “now that Lebanon has returned to the Arab fold, it longs to the active return of its Arab brothers, based on partnership and complementarity.”
He thanked the UAE and its president for “their supportive decisions and for allowing the brotherly Emirati people to visit Lebanon, their second country, again.”
He pointed out that “about 190,000 Lebanese live and work with utmost dedication and sincerity in the UAE, their second country, where they enjoy safety, security and quality of life.”
The Lebanese prime minister mentioned “the ongoing Israeli occupation of our territory,” and the “daily Israeli violations of our sovereignty, while we work on fully implementing decision 1701, and commit to the cessation of hostilities.”
Salam emphasized that “Beirut was and still is a beacon for expression, a hub of freedoms, and a loud Arab voice in the face of darkness and closed-mindedness. Lebanon, this small country in its geography, deep in its wounds, and rich in its cultural and human heritage, is determined to reclaim its place at the heart of the Arab world and on the map of the future despite all the storms,” he said.
Salam also mentioned the challenges facing the media these days, when “media is no longer a true reflection, but a tool that shapes the public opinion, as well as peace and strife.”
Those challenges, he said, required a new discourse.
“Today, we stand at a historic crossroads in the region; a delicate regional moment that calls for a new media discourse. One that counters efforts at marginalization and fragmentation and rekindles hope.
“We seek a modern, dynamic and diverse Arab media that shapes the future and does not dwell upon the past. One that opens windows rather than shuts them. That safeguards freedom rather than exploits it. The discourse, when truthful, can serve as a bridge toward more humane and cohesive societies.”
Women in Sudan’s Darfur at ‘near-constant risk’ of sexual violence: MSF
- The reported attacks in Darfur have been "heinous and cruel, often involving multiple perpetrators," according to MSF emergency coordinator Claire San Filippo
- "Women and girls do not feel safe anywhere," said San Filippo
PORT SUDAN: Sexual violence is a "near-constant risk" for women and girls in Sudan's western region of Darfur, Doctors without Borders (MSF) warned on Wednesday, calling for urgent action to protect civilians and provide support to survivors.
Since war began in April 2023 between Sudan's regular army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces, the reported attacks in Darfur have been "heinous and cruel, often involving multiple perpetrators," according to MSF emergency coordinator Claire San Filippo.
The conflict has killed tens of thousands, displaced 13 million and left the country's already fragile infrastructure in ruins.
The RSF has been accused since the start of the war of systematic sexual violence across the country.
"Women and girls do not feel safe anywhere," said San Filippo, after MSF teams from Darfur and neighbouring Chad gathered harrowing accounts of victims.
"They are attacked in their own homes, when fleeing violence, getting food, collecting firewood, working in the fields. They tell us they feel trapped," she added.
Between January 2024 and March 2025, MSF said it had treated 659 survivors of violence in South Darfur, 94 percent of them women and girls.
More than half were assaulted by armed actors, and nearly a third were minors, with some victims as young as five.
In Tawila, a small town about 60 kilometres (40 miles) to the west from North Darfur's besieged capital of El-Fasher, 48 survivors of sexual violence were treated at the local hospital between January and early May.
Most arrived after fleeing an RSF attack on the Zamzam displacement camp that killed at least 200 civilians and displaced over 400,000.
In eastern Chad, which hosts over 800,000 Sudanese refugees, MSF treated 44 survivors since January 2025 -- almost half of them children.
A 17-year-old girl recounted being gang-raped by RSF fighters, saying: "I wanted to lose my memory after that."
According to Ruth Kauffman, MSF emergency medical manager, "access to services for survivors of sexual violence is lacking and, like most humanitarian and healthcare services in Sudan, must urgently be scaled up".
"People -- mostly women and girls -- who suffer sexual violence urgently need medical care, including psychological support and protection services," she added.
Sudan war shatters infrastructure, costly rebuild needed
- The Sudanese army and paramilitary Rapid Support Forces have been battling since April 2023
- Tens of thousands of people have been killed or injured and about 13 million were uprooted
KHARTOUM: Destroyed bridges, blackouts, empty water stations and looted hospitals across Sudan bear witness to the devastating impact on infrastructure from two years of war.
Authorities estimate hundreds of billions of dollars’ worth of reconstruction would be needed. Yet there is little chance of that in the short-term given continued fighting and drone attacks on power stations, dams and fuel depots.
Not to mention a world becoming more averse to foreign aid where the biggest donor, the US, has slashed assistance.
The Sudanese army and paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) have been battling since April 2023, with tens of thousands of people killed or injured and about 13 million uprooted in what aid groups call the world’s worst humanitarian crisis.
Residents of the capital Khartoum have to endure weeks-long power outages, unclean water and overcrowded hospitals. Their airport is burnt out with shells of planes on the runway.
Most of the main buildings in downtown Khartoum are charred and once-wealthy neighborhoods are ghost towns with destroyed cars and unexploded shells dotting the streets.
“Khartoum is not habitable. The war has destroyed our life and our country and we feel homeless even though the army is back in control,” said Tariq Ahmed, 56.
He returned briefly to his looted home in the capital before leaving it again, after the army recently pushed the RSF out of Khartoum.
One consequence of the infrastructure breakdown can be seen in a rapid cholera outbreak that has claimed 172 deaths out of 2,729 cases over the past week alone mainly in Khartoum.
Other parts of central and western Sudan, including the Darfur region, are similarly ravaged by fighting, while the extensive damage in Khartoum, once the center of service provision, reverberates across the country.
Sudanese authorities estimate reconstruction needs at $300 billion for Khartoum and $700 billion for the rest of Sudan.
The UN is doing its own estimates.
Sudan’s oil production has more than halved to 24,000 barrels-per-day and its refining capabilities ceased as the main Al-Jaili oil refinery sustained $3 billion in damages during battles, Oil and Energy Minister Mohieddine Naeem said.
Without refining capacity, Sudan now exports all its crude and relies on imports, he said. It also struggles to maintain pipelines needed by South Sudan for its own exports.
Earlier this month, drones targeted fuel depots and the airport at the country’s main port city in an attack Sudan blamed on the UAE. The Gulf country denied the accusations.
All of Khartoum’s power stations have been destroyed, Naeem said. The national electrical company recently announced a plan to increase supply from Egypt to northern Sudan and said earlier in the year that repeated drone attacks to stations outside Khartoum were stretching its ability to keep the grid going.
Looted copper
Government forces re-took Khartoum earlier this year and as people return to houses turned upside down by looters, one distinctive feature has been deep holes drilled into walls and roads to uncover valuable copper wire.
On Sudan’s Nile Street, once its busiest throughway, there is a ditch about one meter (three feet) deep and 4 km (2.5 miles) long, stripped of wiring and with traces of burning.
Khartoum’s two main water stations went out of commission early in the war as RSF soldiers looted machinery and used fuel oil to power vehicles, according to Khartoum state spokesperson Altayeb Saadeddine.
Those who have remained in Khartoum resort to drinking water from the Nile or long-forgotten wells, exposing them to waterborne illnesses. But there are few hospitals equipped to treat them.
“There has been systematic sabotage by militias against hospitals, and most medical equipment has been looted and what remains has been deliberately destroyed,” said Health Minister Haitham Mohamed Ibrahim, putting losses to the health system at $11 billion.
With two or three million people looking at returning to Khartoum, interventions were needed to avoid further humanitarian emergencies like the cholera outbreak, said United Nations Development Programme resident representative Luca Renda.
But continued war and limited budget means a full-scale reconstruction plan is not in the works.
“What we can do ... with the capacity we have on the ground, is to look at smaller-scale infrastructure rehabilitation,” he said, like solar-power water pumps, hospitals, and schools.
In that way, he said, the war may provide an opportunity for decentralizing services away from Khartoum, and pursuing greener energy sources.
UN blasts new US-backed aid distribution system in Gaza
- The issue of aid has come sharply into focus amid a hunger crisis in the territory
- Intense criticism of the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, which bypassed the longstanding UN-led system in Gaza
GAZA CITY, Palestinian Territories: The UN on Wednesday condemned a US-backed aid system in Gaza after 47 people were injured during a chaotic food distribution, where the Israeli military said it did not open fire at crowds.
The issue of aid has come sharply into focus amid a hunger crisis coupled with intense criticism of the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), a shadowy group that has bypassed the longstanding UN-led system in the territory.
According to the UN, 47 people were injured in the mayhem that erupted on Tuesday when thousands of Palestinians desperate for food rushed into a GHF aid distribution site, while a Palestinian medical source said at least one had died.
Ajith Sunghay, the head of the UN Human Rights Office in the Palestinian territories, said most of the wounded had been hurt by gunfire, and based on the information he had, “it was shooting from the IDF” — the Israeli military.
The Israeli military rejected the accusation, with Col. Olivier Rafowicz telling AFP that Israeli soldiers “fired warning shots into the air, in the area outside” the center managed by the GHF, and “in no case toward the people.”
With the war sparked by Hamas’s October 2023 attack on Israel entering its 600th day on Wednesday, Palestinians in Gaza felt there was no reason to hope for a better future.
In Israel, the relatives of people held hostage in Gaza since the October 7 attack longed for the return of their loved ones, with hundreds gathering in their name in Tel Aviv.
“Six hundred days have passed and nothing has changed. Death continues, and Israeli bombing does not stop,” said Bassam Daloul, 40, adding that “even hoping for a ceasefire feels like a dream and a nightmare.”
The UN has repeatedly hit out against the GHF, which faces accusations of failing to fulfil the principles of humanitarian work, and Philippe Lazzarini, head of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, on Wednesday reiterated the criticism.
“I believe it is a waste of resources and a distraction from atrocities. We already have an aid distribution system that is fit for purpose,” he said during a visit in Japan.
In Gaza, the civil defense agency said Israeli air strikes killed 16 people since dawn Wednesday.
Heba Jabr, 29, who sleeps in a tent in southern Gaza with her husband and their two children, was struggling to find food.
“Dying by bombing is much better than dying from the humiliation of hunger and being unable to provide bread and water for your children,” she said.
Israel imposed a full blockade on Gaza for over two months, before allowing supplies in at a trickle last week.
A medical source in southern Gaza said that after Tuesday’s stampede at the GHF site “more than 40 injured people arrived at Nasser Hospital, the majority of them wounded by Israeli gunfire,” adding that at least one had died since.
The source added that “a number of other civilians also arrived at the hospital with various bruises.”
On Tuesday, the GHF said around “8,000 food boxes have been distributed so far... totaling 462,000 meals.”
UN agencies and aid groups have argued that the GHF’s designation of so-called secure distribution sites contravenes the principle of humanity because it would force already displaced people to move again in order to stay alive.
Israel stepped up its military offensive in Gaza earlier this month, while mediators push for a ceasefire that remains elusive.
In Israel, hundreds of people gathered to call for a ceasefire that would allow for the release of hostages held by militants in Gaza since their 2023 attack.
Protesters gathered along the country’s roads and on the main highway running through the Israeli coastal city of Tel Aviv at 6:29 am, the exact time the unprecedented October 7 attack began.
Most Israeli media headlines read “600 days,” and focused on the hostage families’ struggle to get their relatives home.
Other events were planned across Israel to make the 600th day of captivity for the 57 remaining hostages still in Gaza.
Some 1,218 people were killed in Hamas’ October 7, 2023, attack, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official figures.
The health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza said on Wednesday that at least 3,924 people had been killed in the territory since Israel ended a ceasefire on March 18, taking the war’s overall toll to 54,084, mostly civilians.
