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In early December 1955, the phone rang at an air base in Colorado Springs. The officers on the watch floor of the Continental Air Defense Command (CONAD) – who were defending the skies above the US and Canada – stiffened.

The Cold War was in full swing and tensions were running high.

The command’s director of operations Colonel Harry Shoup answered the call. On the other end was a child’s voice asking: “Is this Santa Claus?”

According to the colonel’s daughter Terri Van Keuren, now 75, her father initially thought it was a prank, and replied: “I’m the commander of the Combat Alert Center. Who’s this?”

In response, the child started crying and asked if he was one of “Santa’s helpers”.

Col. Harry Shoup, the operations officer at NORAD on Dec. 24, 1955, answered a child's wrong-number call and began the tradition of NORAD tracking Santa. Shoup died March 14, 2009, yet the tradition he started decades ago continues to bring holiday cheer to millions of children around the world. Pic: David Bedard
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Colonel Harry Shoup. Pic: David Bedard

Terri van Keuren, whose father started the Santa Tracker
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Terri van Keuren was six years old when her father began the Santa Tracker tradition

The colonel then decided to play along, replying that he was indeed Santa Claus and mustering a convincing “ho-ho-ho”.

This surprise call started the nearly 70-year tradition of the Santa Tracker, which allows children around the world to track the whereabouts of Father Christmas via a livestream and a phone line answered by volunteers.

It is now run by CONAD’s successor, the North American Aerospace Defence Command (NORAD).

Nearly 1,000 volunteers cycled through the NORAD Tracks Santa Operations Center on Peterson Space Force Base, Colorado, between 4 a.m. and 10 p.m. Dec. 24, 2022. Volunteers providing updated information on Santa's location and gifts delivered worked in two-hour shifts answering phone calls from children and adults located around the globe. Pic: Department of Defense/Chuck Marsh
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The NORAD Tracks Santa Operations Center on Peterson Space Force Base, Colorado, on Christmas Eve 2022. Pic: Department of Defense/Chuck Marsh

But how did a child seemingly get the phone number of a colonel in the US air force?

The American department store Sears had printed an advert in a local newspaper telling children they could call Santa, Terri explains.

“They had printed one digit wrong in the phone number. And it was dad’s top secret number.”

Pic: NORAD DVIDS
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Children can use a livestream to track Father Christmas as he delivers his presents. Pic: NORAD DVIDS

Colonel Shoup called the phone company and asked for a new number for his office.

Meanwhile, the phone at CONAD was “ringing off the hook” and Colonel Shoup told his staff they were to answer the calls as Santa Claus.

In the story told by Terri, on 24 December that year her parents arrived at the base to deliver cookies to those on duty, and found the military establishment unusually festive.

A picture of a sleigh had been drawn by a map writer on plexiglass – which was used to mark where unidentified flying objects were located.

“Next thing they knew, dad was calling the radio station. ‘This is Colonel Shoup, the commander of the Combat Alert Center in Colorado Springs. And we have an unidentified flying object. Why, it looks like a sleigh’,” says Terri.

Terri, who lives in Castle Rock, Colorado, was six years old when her father became the “Santa Colonel”. She says the NORAD Santa Tracker, which reaches millions of children around the world every year, is his “legacy”.

NORAD’s tracking of Santa is a military operation in itself beginning on 1 December.

Brigadier General Jocelyn Schermerhorn, a senior US military officer in Canada, tells Sky News how the day unfolds on Christmas Eve.

“We have about a thousand people come together to set up the operations centre that is used to track Santa and that allows anyone to call in to check on his whereabouts”.

Pic: Charles Marsh
Image:
Pic: Charles Marsh

Volunteers are responsible for answering calls from tens of thousands of children around the world. In 2022, 78,000 calls were answered at Peterson Space Force Base.

For 10 years Terri was one of these volunteers. “I always wore a t-shirt that had a picture of my dad. It says: ‘My dad’s the Santa Colonel’.”

What’s next for the Santa Tracker? Terri says her father’s festive story is so famous she’s “had several requests to make a movie out of it”.

Head to Sky News’ YouTube and other social media channels to watch NORAD’s Santa Tracker and find out where he is in the world delivering presents.

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Some Syrian rebel factions agree to dissolve under new leadership – but fighting continues in north

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Some Syrian rebel factions agree to dissolve under new leadership - but fighting continues in north

Syria’s de facto leader has reached an agreement with the heads of rebel factions to dissolve their groups and work under the country’s defence ministry, his new administration says.

Ahmed al Sharaa, the head of the Hayat Tahrir al Sham (HTS) group which toppled Bashar al Assad‘s regime earlier this month, met with the leaders of several of the rival factions that have been vying for influence in the country for years in the Syrian capital Damascus.

Those in attendance said their groups would dissolve, according to a statement from the new government.

The statement did not make clear which groups attended, but Syria has factions made up of Muslim Kurds and Shi’ites, as well as Syriac, Greek and Armenian Orthodox Christians, and the Druze community.

Syria's de facto leader Ahmed al-Sharaa attends a meeting with former rebel faction chiefs in Damascus.
Pic: SANA/Reuters
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The factions meeting in Damascus. Pic: SANA/Reuters

However, one major group, the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), did not join the meeting in Damascus and has not agreed to dissolve.

It comes as Al Sharaa attempts to end years of civil strife and armed conflict – with the leader telling Western officials that his new government will not seek revenge against the former regime nor repress any religious minority.

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SDF launches fresh counter-offensive as fighting continues

Despite many groups agreeing to dissolve, fighting continues in the north of Syria.

The SDF, which in 2021 was estimated to have some 100,000 members, is not one of the groups set to dissolve and fall under the Syrian defence ministry.

On Tuesday it announced it had instead launched a fresh counter-offensive against the Turkish-backed Syrian National Army (SNA) to take back areas it previously controlled near Syria’s northern border.

Clashes between the SDF and the SNA have intensified since the fall of the Assad regime at the start of the month, and the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights says dozens from both sides have been killed.

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The SDF is one of the US’s key allies in the country, and is frequently used by Washington to counter a resurgence of the so-called Islamic State in Syria.

The SNA, which helped topple the Assad regime, capitalised on the fall of the previous government by quickly launching an offensive and capturing the key city of Manbij and the areas surrounding it.

Since Monday and following overnight fighting, the SDF has recaptured some villages and is just seven miles from the centre of Manbij, according to reports from commanders and rights groups.

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Hundreds protest in Damascus after Syrian Christmas tree set on fire

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Hundreds protest in Damascus after Syrian Christmas tree set on fire

Hundreds of people have protested in Christian areas of the Syrian capital of Damascus after a video emerged showing hooded fighters setting a Christmas tree on fire elsewhere in the country.

“We demand the rights of Christians,” demonstrators chanted as they marched through the city on Christmas Eve.

The overthrow of Bashar al Assad by rebels led by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) – a group once aligned with Al Qaeda – has sparked concerns for religious minorities in Syria, but the group’s leader has insisted that all faiths will be respected.

The protests erupted after a video spread on social media showing fighters torching a Christmas tree in the Christian-majority town of Suqaylabiyah, near the city of Hama.

A man carries a cross at a protest against the burning of the Christmas tree in Hama, at Bab Touma neighbourhood in Damascus, Syria.
Pic: Reuters
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A man carries a cross during the protest in Damascus. Pic: Reuters

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported that the men were foreigners from the Islamist group Ansar al Tawhid.

A demonstrator who gave his name as Georges said he was protesting “injustice against Christians”.

“If we’re not allowed to live our Christian faith in our country, as we used to, then we don’t belong here anymore,” he said.

People gather near a Christmas tree and a flag adopted by the new Syrian rulers, on the day of a protest against the burning of the Christmas tree in Hama, at Bab Touma neighbourhood in Damascus, Syria December 24, 2024. REUTERS/Amr Abdallah Dalsh
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People gather near a Christmas tree in Damascus, Syria. Pic: Reuters

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A religious leader from HTS, the leading rebel group in the coalition that toppled Assad, claimed that those who set the tree on fire were “not Syrian” and promised they would be punished.

“The tree will be restored and lit up by tomorrow morning”, he said.

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Russian cargo ship ‘on Syria mission’ sinks in Mediterranean

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Russian cargo ship 'on Syria mission' sinks in Mediterranean

A Russian cargo ship that Ukraine claims was sent to Syria to collect weapons has sunk in the Mediterranean Sea, according to officials in Moscow.

Two crew members are missing after an engine room explosion sank the Ursa Major between Spain and Algeria, the foreign ministry said. Fourteen other crew were rescued and taken to Spain.

Ukraine’s military intelligence claimed yesterday that the ship, previously called Sparta III, had been sent to Syria to remove weapons and military equipment after the fall of Bashar al Assad.

In a post on Telegram, the agency said the ship broke down near Portugal but the crew were able to “fix the problem and continue through the Strait of Gibraltar”.

It shared a picture of Sparta III, though referred to the ship in the statement as Sparta. There is another Russian ship in the Mediterranean called Sparta, so it is not fully clear which vessel the agency was referring to.

Ship tracking data from the London Stock Exchange Group (LSEG) shows the Ursa Major departed from the Russian port of St Petersburg on 11 December. It was last seen sending a signal at 10.04pm GMT on Monday between Algeria and Spain.

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On leaving St Petersburg it had indicated that its next port of call was the Russian port of Vladivostok.

The operator and owner of the ship is a company called SK-Yug, part of shipping and logistics company Oboronlogistics, according to LSEG data.

Assad fled to Moscow from Syria earlier this month after rebels captured the capital of Damascus in a lightning offensive that brought his family’s five-decade rule to an end.

Russia has the Hmeimim airbase in Latakia and the Tartous naval facility
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Russia has the Hmeimim airbase in Latakia and the Tartous naval facility

The Kremlin has long been an ally of Assad, who gave Vladimir Putin a Mediterranean seaport and a nearby air base in Syria in return for military support during the country’s civil war, which began in 2011.

Four years later, Russia intervened directly in the civil war and launched its first airstrikes in the country after Islamic State fighters seized the historic city of Palmyra. This proved to be a turning point in the conflict.

A year later, Syrian troops, backed by Russia and Iran, recaptured Aleppo – a significant blow to the rebels.

But in recent weeks Russia has been pulling back its military from the frontlines in northern Syria and the removal of Assad has also thrown the future of Moscow’s bases in the country – the Hmeimim airbase in Latakia and the Tartous naval facility – into question.

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