By the standards of other cities I have been in or visited shortly after a revolution, Damascus seems on the face of it relatively calm.
More often than not, I’d expect masked gunmen to be deployed on every corner, patrolling the streets in groups, or whizzing around on battered trucks, with heavy machine guns at the ready and rocket-propelled grenades strapped to roofs or on the backs of fighters.
But that isn’t the case in Damascus.
There are checkpoints in and out of the city but generally speaking, the militia groups that supported Hayat Tahrir al Sham (HTS), which led the takeover of Syria, are keeping a low profile.
Indeed, many have now become part of the newly formed General Security force, and they’re all dressed in matching black uniforms and fatigues.
I’m often asked what Damascus is like now that Bashar al Assad’s regime is gone.
Image: Destroyed Damascus suburbs
First, I have to admit that apart from a couple of brief visits to Damascus before 2011, once the uprising began, I was either in the west or north of the country with the demonstrators and later the rebel forces – far from the capital.
I was also among a small group of journalists on a wanted list by the regime, so travel to government-controlled areas was a non-starter.
Image: The new Syrian flag in Damascus
So for me, my visits to Damascus are part discovery, and part depressing confirmation of what I had expected to see, especially the vast suburban areas reduced to rubble by Assad’s security forces with the aid of the Russian military.
My impression is of a city looking to the future but still suffering from its recent bloody history.
Its people are trying to move on, but many remain in the midst of the ruins, and rebuilding remains a distant hope.
From the Umayyad Square in Damascus, we jumped onto the back of a pick-up truck full of General Security soldiers and sped away through busy traffic and towards a road leading to a hilltop that overlooks the city.
We passed the sprawling presidential palace, built by the Assads, but now under the management of the self-proclaimed “Salvation Government”.
Image: Abdulrahman Dabbagh, head of security in Damascus
We were meeting the man in charge of security here in the capital, Abdulrahman Dabbagh, a youthful cousin of the country’s new president Ahmed al Sharaa.
He told me that to move forward, Syria must also hunt down the senior leaders of the Syrian regime who terrorised the entire population.
“Syrians have every right to see justice served for those who caused them harm during the reign of this now-defunct regime,” Mr Dabbagh said.
“By nature, every human finds comfort in witnessing accountability, justice, and the rightful reclaiming of what was taken.”
I asked him if it is difficult tracking down those responsible.
“There are assessments, research, and round-the-clock work being done to locate these criminals,” he explained.
“It’s not always about taking direct action against every person we identify, though, we wait for official orders to arrest certain figures.”
‘The torture was endless’
Barely a family in this country was untouched by the regime and its relentless programme of detentions and torture in jails.
Bariya, 63, was detained for 100 days. Her crime? She was accused of cooking food for demonstrators and spying on regime checkpoints in the city of Homs.
Image: Stuart Ramsay with 63-year-old Bariya who was detained for 100 days
Inside her prison, she says torture was the norm, and the memories of the cries of the men still haunt her.
“It would begin as soon as the sun went down. The torture was endless. My husband was not spared – I recognised his cries. They tormented him,” she told me.
Image: Inside an empty prison in Damascus
“One of the inmates called out to him, shouting that his family was here, the warders heard her, came straight for him, they dragged him away and beat him in the corridor.”
“They tortured him relentlessly, with no regard for his age – he was born in 1955,” she sobbed.
A legacy of pain and death
Bariya is still so afraid of the Assad regime, she won’t show her face or allow us to use her last name.
She was arrested at the height of the anti-Assad protests, along with multiple members of her family. Seven of them died in detention: her husband, one of her sons, two of her brothers, her nephew, a cousin, and the son of her brother-in-law.
To this day she has no idea what happened.
The legacy of the Assad tyranny is pain and death, and this ancient country’s recent history is still raw for so many.
Consigning it to the history books is going to take some time.
The IDF has admitted to mistakenly identifying a convoy of aid workers as a threat – following the emergence of a video which proved their ambulances were clearly marked when Israeli troops opened fire on them.
The bodies of 15 aid workers – including eight medics working for the Palestine Red Crescent Society (PRCS) – were found in a “mass grave” after the incident, according to the head of the UN Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs Jonathan Whittall.
The Israeli military originally claimed an investigation found the vehicles did not have any headlights or emergency signals and were therefore targeted as they looked “suspicious”.
But video footage obtained by the PRCS, and verified by Sky News, showed the ambulances and a fire vehicle clearly marked with flashing red lights.
In a briefing from the IDF, they said the ambulances arrived in the Tel Sultan neighbourhood in Rafah shortly after a Hamas police vehicle drove through.
Image: Palestinians mourning the medics after their bodies were recovered. Pic: Reuters
An IDF surveillance aircraft was watching the movement of the ambulances and notified troops on the ground. The IDF said it will not be releasing that footage.
When the ambulances arrived, the soldiers opened fire, thinking the medics were a threat, according to the IDF.
The soldiers were surprised by the convoy stopping on the road and several people getting out quickly and running, the IDF claimed, adding the soldiers were unaware the suspects were in fact unarmed medics.
An Israeli military official would not say how far away troops were when they fired on the vehicles.
The IDF acknowledged that its statement claiming that the ambulances had their lights off was incorrect, and was based on the testimony from the soldiers in the incident.
The newly emerged video footage showed that the ambulances were clearly identifiable and had their lights on, the IDF said.
The IDF added that there will be a re-investigation to look into this discrepancy.
Image: The clip is filmed through a vehicle windscreen – with three red light vehicles visible in front
Addressing the fact the aid workers’ bodies were buried in a mass grave, the IDF said in its briefing this is an approved and regular practice to prevent wild dogs and other animals from eating the corpses.
The IDF could not explain why the ambulances were also buried.
The IDF said six of the 15 people killed were linked to Hamas, but revealed no detail to support the claim.
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1:22
Bodies of aid workers found in Gaza
The newly emerged footage of the incident was discovered on a phone belonging to one of the workers who was killed, PRCS president Dr Younis Al Khatib said.
“His phone was found with his body and he recorded the whole event,” he said. “His last words before being shot, ‘Forgive me, mom. I just wanted to help people. I wanted to save lives’.”
Sky News used an aftermath video and satellite imagery to verify the location and timing of the newly emerged footage of the incident.
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Aid worker attacks increasing
It was filmed on 23 March north of Rafah and shows a convoy of marked ambulances and a fire-fighting vehicle travelling south along a road towards the city centre. All the vehicles visible in the convoy have their flashing lights on.
The footage was filmed early in the morning, with a satellite image seen by Sky News taken at 9.48am local time on the same day showing a group of vehicles bunched together off the road.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has hit out at the US over its “weak” response to lethal Russian attacks on his hometown on Friday.
President Zelenskyy posted a lengthy and emotional statement on X about Russia’s strikes on Kryvyi Rih, which killed 19 people.
Meanwhile Ukrainian drones hit an explosives factory in Russia’s Samara region in an overnight strike, a member of Ukraine’s SBU security service told Reuters.
In his post, President Zelenskyy accused the United States of being “afraid” to name-check Russia in its comment on the attack.
“Unfortunately, the reaction of the American Embassy is unpleasantly surprising: such a strong country, such a strong people – and such a weak reaction,” he wrote on X.
“They are even afraid to say the word “Russian” when talking about the missile that killed children.”
America’s ambassador to Ukraine Bridget Brink had written on X: “Horrified that tonight a ballistic missile struck near a playground and restaurant in Kryvyi Rih.
“More than 50 people injured and 16 killed, including 6 children. This is why the war must end.”
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Strike on Zelenskyy’s home city
President Zelenskyy went on in his post to say: “Yes, the war must end. But in order to end it, we must not be afraid to call a spade a spade.
“We must not be afraid to put pressure on the only one who continues this war and ignores all the world’s proposals to end it. We must put pressure on Russia, which chooses to kill children instead of a ceasefire.”
Grandmother ‘burned to death in her home’
Oleksandr Vilkul, head of the city’s defense council, said the missile attack, followed by a drone attack, had killed 19 people, including nine children.
“The Iskander-M missile strike with cluster munitions at the children’s playground in the residential area, to make the shrapnel fly further apart, killed 18 people.
“One grandmother was burnt to death in her house after Shahed’s direct hit.”
Russia’s defence ministry said it had struck a military gathering in a restaurant – an assertion rebutted by the Ukrainian military as misinformation.
“The missile hit right on the street – around ordinary houses, a playground, shops, a restaurant,” President Zelenskyy wrote.
Mr Zelenskyy also detailed the child victims of the attack including “Konstantin, who will be 16 forever” and “Arina, who will also be 7 forever”.
The UK’s chief of the defence staff Sir Tony Radakin said he had met the Ukrainian leader on Friday, along with French armed forces leader General Thierry Burkhard.
“Britain and France are coming together & Europe is stepping up in a way that is real & substantial, with 200 planners from 30 nations working to strengthen Ukraine’s long term security,” Sir Tony wrote.
Global financial markets gave a clear vote of no-confidence in President Trump’s economic policy.
The damage it will do is obvious: costs for companies will rise, hitting their earnings.
The consequences will ripple throughout the global economy, with economists now raising their expectations for a recession, not only in the US, but across the world.