Syria

Relatives of Islamic State members set fire to buildings and escaped from a sprawling prison camp in Syria on Tuesday as Kurdish troops abandoned the site under attack by the army.

The head of al-Hol camp said that its residents, most of whom are female and many of whom are married to jailed or killed extremists, were rioting after fighting between Kurdish and Syrian army troops.

BREAKING:

The Kurdish-led SDF forces have withdrawn from the al-Hol camp where 22 000 ISIS kids & 20 000 ISIS wives are imprisoned

Many of the kids were born there to parents with EU citizenships. Presumably, many of them will now try to return to Europe pic.twitter.com/Gp4ukzftI5

— Visegrád 24 (@visegrad24) January 20, 2026

ISIS families & members are reportedly fleeing Al-Hol camp in thousands. pic.twitter.com/ZdNTdTLKB9

— Murad Ismael (@murad_ismael) January 20, 2026

An explosion has killed at least eight people and injured 18 others during Friday prayers inside a mosque in the Syrian city of Homs, the health ministry has said.

Pictures from Syria’s state-run news agency, Sana, show the inside of the Imam Ali ibn Abi Talib Mosque with black, scorched walls, smashed windows and blood on the carpet.

Officials believe that an explosive was detonated inside the building, Sana reports, citing a security source. While authorities are still searching for the perpetrators, jihadist group Saraya Ansar al-Sunnah said it was behind the explosion

IZRAA, Syria—Early one morning last December, Dr. Mamdouh Zoubi drove to a farm on the edge of this small town in southern Syria to collect the bodies in a newly found mass grave, one of more than 100 turned up across the country.

The new owners of the farm, which had been sold days earlier, shortly after the fall of President Bashar al-Assad’s regime, had stumbled across the bodies that morning and alerted Dr. Zoubi, who is one of the only forensic specialists in the area. The burial site, now used as a tomato farm, was next to a military checkpoint that served for years as a base for Assad’s soldiers.

After militias called for the so-called remnants of the Assad regime to be ‘crushed’, massacres were turned into memes. Families fear they’ll never get justice

The widows saw their men forced to bark like dogs before they were killed. Hundreds of thousands of Syrians saw their final degradation, too, as well as the faces of the killers, as the deaths were broadcast on social media.

When Hadeel Nakher saw her husband Qais, 50, and son Ahmed, 30, for the last time on the screen of her phone, they were kneeling by a verge with two other captives, her brother-in-law and a neighbour, being beaten with belts and kicks by a group of armed men. “Bark, bark, bark, you bastards!” a jeering Sunni fighter yelled into their faces as the blows rained down. “I don’t hear you barking.”