21 May 2016
“For a moment, I felt like we were talking to a car technician—not a doctor. We are refugees, but we are still human.”
Featured
by Janine di Giovanni via The New York Times
The Syrian government allowed hundreds of students to leave two besieged areas near Damascus to take their year-end exams over the weekend, even as other suburbs of the capital came under fierce attack.
Inside Syria
By Philip Issa via The Washington Post
Syria’s Central Bank ordered money changers to exchange currency at an unprecedented 620 Syrian pounds to the dollar and announced it would reevaluate the rate on a daily basis.
by Louisa Loveluck via The New York Times
The starving people of a Damascus suburb, enduring one of the longest sieges in Syria’s civil war, were prevented from receiving aid on Thursday when Bashar al-Assad’s forces turned back a desperately-needed convoy.
Refugees
By Khalid Albaih "Khartoon"
By Somini Sengupta ˆvia The New York Times
The United Nations secretary general, Ban Ki-moon, has repeatedly called on world leaders to accept refugees, but his pleas have been met with reluctance, while the U.S. has accepted less than 2,000 refugees this year.
By Alex Barder via The Financial Times
A Dutch mayor has been accused of putting himself above the law for helping a family of Syrian refugees avoid deportation.
By Somini Sengupta ˆvia The New York Times
The United Nations secretary general, Ban Ki-moon, has repeatedly called on world leaders to accept refugees, but his pleas have been met with reluctance, while the U.S. has accepted less than 2,000 refugees this year.
Conflict Analysis
By Kim Hjelmgaard and Oren Dorell via USA TODAY
Mustafa Badreddine, a top military commander for Hezbollah, died in an explosion in the Syrian capital of Damascus, Lebanon's Iran-backed militant group said Friday.
via BBC News
Militants from the Islamic State (IS) group have briefly overrun a hospital complex in the eastern Syrian city of Deir al-Zour, reports say.
By Eric Cunningham via Mid-East Wire
"When the UN committee visited the city, it saw thousands of civilians besieged by Al-Assad and his regime, and suffering from an extremely difficult humanitarian situation."
Proxy Politics
via The Wall Street Journal
President Erdogan hints at sending troops to end rocket attacks, confirms no U.S. backing for move.
By Joseph A. Kechichian via Gulf News Lebanon
Foreign Minister Jibran Bassil fears that the overwhelming number of Sunnis among Syrian refugees will tip the confessional balance of power.
By Ed Hall
By Patrick Strickland & Ahmed El-Amraoui via Al Jazeera
The US and Russia have been carrying out separate bombing campaigns in Syria.
via BBC News
Calm has been restored in Baghdad, hours after security forces opened fire to stop protesters storming the Green Zone, reportedly injuring dozens.
