Syria arrests 3 men suspected of links to Tadamon massacre in which hundreds were executed

KHIAM: Sabah Abdullah comes to her hometown in Lebanon every morning and sits next to her destroyed home. She is waiting for experts from Hezbollah’s construction arm to compensate her for the damage caused by the Israel-Hezbollah war that has left her homeless.
The 66-year-old from Khiam now rents a home in the nearby village of Kawkaba and is repairing her small grocery store, which was badly damaged by the 13-month war that ended in late November as a result of a US-brokered ceasefire. The war has left more than 4,000 people dead and over 16,000 wounded in Lebanon and caused damage worth billions of dollars.
“Damage can be compensated but the loss of souls cannot be replaced,” said Abdullah as she sat on a plastic chair in the sun outside her shop.
Israeli forces will remain in parts of southern Lebanon
The 60-day ceasefire that was supposed to end on Jan. 27 — with an Israeli withdrawal from Lebanon and the militant Hezbollah group ending its armed presence along the border area — was extended until Tuesday. But an Israeli official said on Monday that Israeli forces will remain in five strategic locations in southern Lebanon after the deadline.
One of these locations is the Hamamis hill on the southern outskirts of Khiam. On Monday, bulldozers could be seen from a distance at work building what appeared to be fortifications in an apparent sign that Israel’s military is planning to stay long beyond Tuesday’s deadline.
Hezbollah leader Naim Kassem said in a speech on Sunday that Israel must withdraw fully from Lebanon on Tuesday, adding that “there is no pretext for five points nor other details.” He said the Lebanese state should prevent Israel from staying in the country after Tuesday as stated in the ceasefire deal.
The Israel-Hezbollah war began a day after Hamas carried out its deadly attack in southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, killing 1,200 people and taking about 250 people hostage and triggering the Israel-Hamas war. The Israel-Hezbollah war intensified as of Sept. 23, when Israel expanded its attacks and killed Hezbollah’s longtime top leader and one of its founders, Hassan Nasrallah.
Widespread damage in Khiam
Khiam, one of the largest towns close to the Israeli border, suffered widespread damage, including entire blocks that were turned to piles of debris. Graffiti left behind by Israeli troops could be seen on the walls as well as inside homes. The town’s cemetery suffered severe damage, with many graves blown out.
On Monday, workers were removing debris in different locations in Khiam as many residents come during the day to spend a few hours at their homes and leave before sunset since the town still has no electricity or running water. New poles were being put in place by the country’s state-run electricity company as the infrastructure suffered severe damage.
“In Khiam everyone was martyred,” read a graffiti on a wall in Arabic. “Khiam is Golani’s graveyard,” another one read, referring to Israel’s Golani Brigade.
In a building on the eastern edge of Khiam, a woman showed a journalist a Star of David sprayed in red at the entrance of her apartment. The woman, who asked not to be named for safety reasons, then walked through her apartment, showing a reporter the damage in the sitting room and kitchen.
Abdallah said when she first came to Khiam days after the ceasefire went into effect in late November, she found that hungry cats and dogs inside her badly damaged shop had eaten cakes, croissants and chocolates. The metal door of her shop was blown wide open, she said.
Seeing her home, built by her late father, destroyed saddened her but Abdallah said she is happy that none of her siblings or relatives were hurt during the war.
‘The future is obscure’
Abdallah said that soon after the war ended, Hezbollah’s construction arm Jihad Al-Binaa paid her $12,000, of which $8,000 were to compensate her for lost furniture and $4,000 for a year’s rent.
Abdallah said that since the Israel-Hezbollah war began, she rented a house in Marakaba and had spent most of her savings and was selling some of her jewelry. She said she is now waiting for government experts to visit her and estimate the losses to pay her for rebuilding her two-story house that she shared with her brother.
“I will rebuild my house but the future is obscure. We live close to the border,” Abdallah said, referring to repeated wars with Israel over the past decades.
Another Khiam resident, Dalal Abdallah, said if Israel decides to stay in Lebanon, Israel will be eventually forced to leave again.
“Valuable blood and souls were paid for this land,” she said. “No one should think that we will leave our land.”

HOMS, Syria: Once dubbed the capital of the revolution against Bashar Assad, Homs saw some of the fiercest fighting in Syria’s civil war. Now, displaced people are returning to their neighborhoods, only to find them in ruins.
It was in Homs that rebels first took up arms to fight Assad’s crackdown on protests in 2011.
The military responded by besieging and bombarding rebel areas such as Baba Amr, where US journalist Marie Colvin and French journalist Remi Ochlik were killed in a bombing in 2012.
Since Assad’s ouster, people have started returning to neighborhoods they fled following successive evacuation agreements that saw Assad take back control.
“The house is burned down, there are no windows, no electricity,” said Duaa Turki at her dilapidated home in Khaldiyeh neighborhood.
“We removed the rubble, lay a carpet” and moved in, said the 30-year-old mother of four.
“Despite the destruction, we’re happy to be back. This is our neighborhood and our land.”
Her husband spends his days looking for a job, she said, while they hope humanitarian workers begin distributing aid to help the family survive.
The siege of Homs lasted two years and killed around 2,200 people, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.
During the siege, thousands of civilians and rebels were left with nothing to eat but dried foods and grass.
In May 2014, under an evacuation deal negotiated with the former government, most of those trapped in the siege were evacuated, and two years later, Assad seized the last rebel district of Waer.
“We were besieged... without food or water, under air raids, and barrel bombings,” before being evacuated to the rebel-held north, Turki said.
AFP journalists saw dozens of families returning to Homs from northern Syria, many of them tearful as they stepped out of the buses organized by local activists.
Among them was Adnan Abu Al-Ezz, 50, whose son was wounded by shelling during the siege and who later died because soldiers at a checkpoint barred him from taking him to hospital.
“They refused to let me pass, they were mocking me,” he said with tears in his eyes.
“I knew my house was nearly destroyed, but I came back to the precious soil of Homs,” he said.
While protests and fighting spread across Syria over the course of the 13-year war, Homs’s story of rebellion holds profound symbolism for the demonstrators.
It was there that Abdel Basset Al-Sarout, a football goalkeeper in the national youth team, joined the protests and eventually took up arms.
He became something of a folk hero to many before he joined an Islamist armed group and was eventually killed in fighting.
In 2013, his story became the focus of a documentary by Syrian filmmaker Talal Derki named “The Return to Homs,” which won international accolades.
Homs returnee Abu Al-Moatasim, who remembers Sarout, recounted being detained for joining a protest.
When he saw security personnel approaching in a car, he prayed for “God to drop rocket on us so I die” before reaching the detention center, one of a network dotted around the country that were known for torture.
His father bribed an officer in exchange for his release a few days later, he said.
In Baba Amr, for a time early in the war a bastion of the rebel Free Syrian Army, there was rubble everywhere.
The army recaptured the district in March 2012, following a siege and an intense bombardment campaign.
It was there that Colvin and Ochlik were killed in a bombing of an opposition press center.
In 2019, a US court found Assad’s government culpable in Colvin’s death, ordering a $302.5 million judgment for what it called an “unconscionable” attack that targeted journalists.
Touring the building that housed the press center, Abdel Qader Al-Anjari, 40, said he was an activist helping foreign journalists at that time.
“Here we installed the first Internet router to communicate with the outside world,” he said.
“Marie Colvin was martyred here, targeted by the regime because they did not want (anyone) to document what was happening,” he said.
He described her as a “friend” who defied the “regime blackout imposed on journalists” and others documenting the war.
After leaving Homs, Anjari himself became a rebel fighter, and years later took part in the offensive that ousted Assad on December 8, 2024.
“Words cannot describe what I felt when I reached the outskirts of Homs,” he said.
Now, he has decided to lay down his arms.
“This phase does not call for fighters, it calls for people to build a state,” he said.