There were also unconfirmed reports of defections within the army and soldiers being arrested for refusing orders to brutalize their fellow citizens during the Siege of Daraa.

Those who possessed satellite phones made frantic calls for help, describing the lack of water, food, medicine, or formula for babies. Anyone who went outside to retrieve these necessities or to pull dead and wounded people out of the streets was immediately shot.

Eyewitnesses also reported seeing militants wearing civilian clothes working alongside the soldiers, carrying both guns and knives.

The siege would go on until May 5, by which time hundreds of Daraa residents were killed and thousands more were arrested by the Assad regime.

The Omari Mosque, which included a makeshift field hospital for protestors wounded in the previous days by regime gunfire, was ransacked and desecrated.

Snipers fired indiscriminately at any civilians who stepped outside or popped their head out of a window while the homes of known or suspected protestors were either raided by soldiers or bombed by the tanks.

Shortly before dawn on April 25, 2011, tanks drove into the city accompanied by somewhere between several hundred to six thousand soldiers and militiamen.

aljazeera.com/features/2011/…

Thread 🧵

Daraa was both the birthplace of the Syrian Revolution and among the first cities to be brutally besieged by the Assad regime.

The New York Times None of us can say why Hope cried or what’s going through her head. But as mysterious as she is, I can’t imagine that as she criss-crossed America at Trump’s side, she ever imagined testifying in a criminal case against a man who saw her as a surrogate daughter.

NEW: We just took a brief break because the most composed woman in Trump’s orbit — Hope Hicks — broke down on the stand right as cross examination started. Why would Hicks burst into tears—and why is she struggling to keep it together now? 1/

FLASH: Rep. Henry Cuellar (D-TX) & his wife have been indicted

Justice Dept alleges they accepted at least $598,000 in bribes from two foreign entities:

1) oil & gas company wholly owned & controlled by Government of Azerbaijan

2) a bank headquartered in Mexico City'

Know what you won't hear?

Any Dems saying the DoJ is weaponized against them, defending Cuellar, or calling the charges politically motivated.

Maybe I don't know how to describe what's inside me, but I'm lost.💔

The Offred stage of Republican abortion extremism is starting. 👇

Texas man files legal action to probe ex-partner’s out-of-state abortion.
The previously unreported petition reflects a potential new antiabortion strategy to block women from ending their pregnancies in states…

I keep telling people, eventually we're going to get a 'Dredd Scott' case that make abortion (and trans people, and birth control) illegal everywhere.

Mueller, She Wrote Government's opposition to Nauta's request for a delay in the deadline for CIPA 5 that was just filed

Just in: When the FBI seized classified materials during its search of Mar-a-Lago, it replaced the actual sensitive documents in the boxes with 'placeholder' sheets.
But prosecutors say there was so much classified material that agents ran out of placeholders.

My first memory of printing out Arabic poetry to read and admire was his. I was some 14 years old and to have met a humble poet and be able to understand his sadness and fury was something that no detached literature class could teach.

The contributions of Essam Al Attar to both a better Syria, and the Muslim political movement are colossal. Pray God bestows His mercy on him, and grants him much peace in the afterlife — for all that he suffered in this life.

Essam Al Attar survived several assassination attempts, but his wife Banan Al Tantawi didn’t. She was assassinated by the Hafez Assad regime in their home in Germany in 1981 — leaving him to spend his life mourning her with beautiful gut-wrenching poetry.

Essam Al Attar, his daughter Hadia Al Attar, Mazen Hamada & others in a protest in Germany against Assad regime; circa 2014-2019.

*Hamada has been forcibly disappeared in Syria since Feb 2020.
*Al Attar was exiled in 1963 & survived assassination until his passing, today.