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Once dubbed the capital of the revolution against Bashar al-Assad, Homs saw some of the fiercest fighting in Syria’s civil war. Now, displaced people are returning to their neighbourhoods, 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 neighbourhoods 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 neighbourhood. “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 neighbourhood 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.- ‘Precious soil of Homs’ -AFP journalists saw dozens of families returning to Homs from northern Syria, many of them tearful as they stepped out of the buses organised 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 centre, 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.- ‘Build a state’ -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 centre.In 2019, a US court found Assad’s government culpable in Colvin’s death, ordering a $302.5 million judgement for what it called an “unconscionable” attack that targeted journalists.Touring the building that housed the press centre, 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.

A deadline expired Tuesday for all Israeli troops to leave south Lebanon under a ceasefire deal with Hezbollah, hours after Israel said it planned to remain in five strategic locations.Israeli troops had started withdrawing Monday from some border villages, according to a Lebanese security official, but they seemed poised to stay in key areas. “Israeli forces are beginning to withdraw from border villages, including Mais al-Jabal and Blida, as the Lebanese army advances,” the official told AFP, requesting anonymity to discuss sensitive matters.Hezbollah strongholds in south and east Lebanon and south Beirut saw heavy destruction during two months of all-out war and a year of cross-border hostilities initiated by Hezbollah over the Gaza conflict. Authorities estimate reconstruction costs could reach more than $10 billion, while more than 100,000 remain internally displaced, according to United Nations figures.Despite the devastation, thousands have been waiting eagerly since the November 27 ceasefire to return home, inspect their properties and in some cases search for the dead under the rubble.”I miss sitting in front of my house, near my roses and having a morning cup of coffee,” said Fatima Shukeir, in her sixties, who plans to return to her border village after more than a year and a half of displacement.”I miss everything in Mais al-Jabal, I miss my neighbours. We were separated and I don’t know where they went,” Shukeir said.Several border towns and villages, including Mais al-Jabal’s municipality, have called on displaced residents to wait for the Lebanese army to deploy there before coming back, so as to guarantee their “safe” return.- ‘Homes destroyed’ -Under the ceasefire, brokered by Washington and Paris, Lebanon’s military was to deploy alongside United Nations peacekeepers as the Israeli army withdrew over a 60-day period that was extended to February 18.Hezbollah was to pull back north of the Litani River, about 30 kilometres (20 miles) from the border, and dismantle remaining military infrastructure there.Hours before the deadline, Israel’s military said Monday it would remain temporarily “in five strategic points” dotted along the length of the shared border in order to “continue to defend our residents and to make sure there’s no immediate threat”.Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Sunday that Israel would do what it has to in order to “enforce” the ceasefire.”Hezbollah must be disarmed,” he added.Lebanese authorities have rejected any extension of the withdrawal period, urging sponsors of the deal to pressure Israel to pull out.Israeli troops are still present in a handful of villages and towns in southeast Lebanon.”We’ll go to our town and be happy (again), despite the fact that our homes have been destroyed and we lost young people,” Shukeir said.On Monday, Ramzi Kaiss from Human Rights Watch said “Israel’s deliberate demolition of civilian homes and infrastructure” was making it “impossible for many residents to return”.Since the cross-border hostilities began in October 2023, more than 4,000 people have been killed in Lebanon, according to the health ministry.On the Israeli side of the border, 78 people including soldiers have been killed, according to an AFP tally based on official figures, with an additional 56 troops dead in southern Lebanon during the ground offensive.Around 60 people have reportedly been killed since the truce began, two dozen of them on January 26 as residents tried to return to border towns on the initial withdrawal deadline.On Monday evening, Lebanon’s government said the state should be the sole bearer of arms, in a thinly veiled message on Hezbollah’s arsenal.Calls for the Iran-backed group’s disarmament have multiplied since the end of the war that has weakened the group.

Top US and Russian diplomats will meet in Saudi Arabia on Tuesday for talks on resetting their countries’ fractured relations and making a tentative start on trying to end the Ukraine war.Both sides played down the chances that the first high-level meeting between the countries since US President Donald Trump took office would result in a breakthrough.Still, the very fact the talks were taking place has triggered concern in Ukraine and Europe following the United States’ recent overtures towards the Kremlin.Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said Kyiv was not invited to the discussions in Riyadh, while European leaders were gathering in Paris for emergency talks on how to respond to the radical pivot by the new US administration.Preparations for a possible summit between presidents Trump and Vladimir Putin are also expected to be on the agenda.Trump is pushing for a swift resolution to the three-year conflict in Ukraine, while Russia sees his outreach as a chance to win concessions.Zelensky said Kyiv “did not know anything about” the talks in Riyadh, according to Ukrainian news agencies, and that it “cannot recognise any things or any agreements about us without us”.He said on social media that any peace deal would need to include “robust and reliable” security guarantees, which France and Britain have called for but not all European powers support.Russia said ahead of the meeting that Putin and Trump wanted to move on from “abnormal relations” and that it saw no place for Europeans to be at any negotiating table.Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and senior Putin aide Yuri Ushakov will meet with US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, National Security Advisor Mike Waltz and Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff.- Possible Trump-Putin summit -Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters the talks would be “primarily devoted to restoring the whole complex of Russian-American relations”, alongside discussions on “possible negotiations on a Ukrainian resolution, and organising a meeting between the two presidents”.Moscow, which for years has sought to roll back NATO’s presence in Europe, has made clear it wants to hold bilateral talks with the United States on a plethora of broad security issues, not just a possible Ukraine ceasefire.Before invading in February 2022, Putin was demanding the military alliance pull its troops, equipment and bases out of several eastern members that were under Moscow’s sphere of influence during the Cold War.The prospects of any talks leading to an agreement to halt the Ukraine fighting are unclear.Both Russia and the United States have cast the meeting as the beginning of a potentially lengthy process.”I don’t think that people should view this as something that is about details or moving forward in some kind of a negotiation,” US State Department spokesperson Tammy Bruce said.Russia’s Ushakov told state media the talks would discuss “how to start negotiations on Ukraine.”Both Ukraine and Russia have ruled out territorial concessions and Putin last year demanded Kyiv withdraw its troops from even more territory.Zelensky will travel to Turkey on Tuesday to discuss the conflict with President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, and then Saudi Arabia a day later.He does not plan to hold talks with either the US or Russian delegations, his spokesman said Monday.Zelensky said last week he was prepared to meet Putin, but only after Kyiv and its allies had a common position on ending the war.- Saudi back in the fold -As European leaders gathered in Paris for an emergency security summit, Russia’s Lavrov said Monday he saw no point in them taking part in any Ukraine talks.The significance of the talks taking place in Riyadh was not lost on analysts.A diplomatic pariah under the former US administration, it has been brought back into the fold with Trump’s return.”Europe’s the traditional meeting place for the Americans and the Russians, but that’s not an option in the current environment,” said James Dorsey of the National University of Singapore. “You either go to Asia or you go to Saudi Arabia,” he said.Moscow heads into the talks boosted by recent gains on the battlefield, while Kyiv also faces the prospect of losing vital US military aid, long criticised by Trump.burs-jc/ser/tym

A Lebanese official said Israeli troops had started withdrawing Monday from some border villages, after Israel’s military said it would remain in five “strategic points” hours before a ceasefire deadline to pull out.Earlier, Lebanon’s president voiced concern that Israel would miss the Tuesday deadline under the ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah, and urged countries to pressure it to honour the cut-off.”Israeli forces are beginning to withdraw from border villages, including Mais al-Jabal and Blida, as the Lebanese army advances,” the security official told AFP, requesting anonymity to discuss sensitive matters.Israeli military spokesman Lieutenant Colonel Nadav Shoshani earlier said that “based on the current situation, we will leave small amounts of troops deployed temporarily in five strategic points along the border in Lebanon”.He said the decision came “so we can continue to defend our residents and to make sure there’s no immediate threat”.Israel had been due to finalise its withdrawal by February 18, after it missed a January deadline.”We are afraid that a complete withdrawal will not be achieved tomorrow,” President Joseph Aoun said ahead of the Israeli military’s announcement.The Israel-Hezbollah ceasefire took effect on November 27, after more than a year of hostilities that saw Israel launch a ground offensive into Lebanon.Under the ceasefire, Lebanon’s military was to deploy in the south alongside United Nations peacekeepers as the Israeli army withdrew over an initial 60-day period that was later extended to February 18.Hezbollah was to pull back north of the Litani River in southern Lebanon and dismantle its military infrastructure in the south.- Lebanon army ‘ready’ -Aoun said the army was ready to deploy “in towns and villages that the Israelis will withdraw from” and to “protect the border”.Lebanon was working “diplomatically to achieve the full Israeli withdrawal”, he said.Since the ceasefire began, Israel has continued to carry out strikes on Lebanon, with the military saying Monday it killed a Hamas commander in the south.Hezbollah chief Naim Qassem on Sunday said it was the government’s responsibility to ensure the Israeli army fully withdraws by Tuesday’s deadline.During a joint address with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday, top US diplomat Marco Rubio said that “in the case of Lebanon, our goals are aligned… A strong Lebanese state that can take on and disarm Hezbollah”.Netanyahu said that “Hezbollah must be disarmed. And Israel would prefer that the Lebanese army do that job, but no one should doubt that Israel will do what it has to do to enforce the understandings of the ceasefire and defend our security.”Aoun said Monday that “the important thing is to achieve the Israeli withdrawal, and Hezbollah’s weapons come as part of solutions the Lebanese agree on.”Lebanon’s government said the state should be the sole bearer of arms and vowed to liberate “all Lebanese territory”.Hezbollah was the only Lebanese armed group that refused to surrender its weapons to the state following the 1975-1990 civil war.- Hezbollah left weakened -Once a formidable armed movement, Hezbollah was left massively weakened by the latest war with Israel, which saw a string of senior commanders and even its longtime chief Hassan Nasrallah killed in strikes.In spite of the truce, more than 100,000 people remain internally displaced in Lebanon, according to the UN’s migration agency, and Lebanese authorities have said reconstruction could cost up to $11 billion.Ramzi Kaiss from Human Rights Watch said Monday that “Israel’s deliberate demolition of civilian homes and infrastructure” was making it “impossible for many residents to return”.

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said on Monday, during talks with Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, that any deal on the future of war-torn Gaza must boost regional security, the US State Department said.Rubio, who arrived from Israel accompanied by National Security Advisor Mike Waltz and special Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff, met the de facto ruler ahead of talks expected on Tuesday with a Russian delegation in the Saudi capital.But the 500-day-old Israel-Hamas war dominated discussions, according to a State Department statement.Rubio and the crown prince “reaffirmed their commitment to implementing the ceasefire in Gaza and ensuring that Hamas releases all hostages, including American citizens”, the statement said.”The secretary underscored the importance of an arrangement for Gaza that contributes to regional security,” it added.The two “discussed ways to advance shared interests in Syria, Lebanon, and across the region, to include Red Sea security and freedom of navigation”, said the statement, which made no reference to President Donald Trump’s widely criticised plan for the United States to take over the Gaza Strip and move away the Palestinian population.A Saudi statement said only that Rubio and the crown prince “discussed regional and international developments” and “efforts to assure security and stability in the region”.Saudi Arabia and other Arab nations have strongly opposed the US plan for Gaza, and State Department spokeswoman Tammy Bruce made no mention of the proposal in the statement.Rubio also met Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan but neither commented to reporters afterwards.The State Department, however, said that in the talks with the crown prince, Rubio highlighted “the strength of the US-Saudi relationship” and “looked forward to increased economic and defence cooperation between the United States and Saudi Arabia”.Trump, in his first term as president, launched efforts to establish diplomatic ties between Saudi Arabia and Israel. The Gaza war has hardened Arab attitudes towards normalisation, however.In Jerusalem, the US secretary of state gave strong support to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his uncompromising military campaign in Gaza since the October 7, 2023 Hamas attacks on Israel.Witkoff played a key role in securing the ceasefire deal between Israel and Hamas which took effect on January 19 and led to an exchange of hostages held by Hamas for Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails.The US administration has said that Rubio, Waltz and Witkoff on Tuesday would meet a Russian delegation including Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov in Riyadh, ahead of a future meeting on Ukraine between Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin in the Saudi capital.

Israel expressed commitment on Monday to a US proposal to take over Gaza and displace its Palestinian residents, as Washington’s top diplomat held talks in Saudi Arabia where he was expected to push the plan opposed by Arab states.Arriving in the kingdom after talks in Israel, Secretary of State Marco Rubio — on his first visit to the Middle East — met de facto ruler Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the State Department said.A Saudi source earlier told AFP that Riyadh would host a regional summit later this week “to discuss Arab alternatives” to President Donald Trump’s widely criticised plan for Gaza.Egypt, Jordan, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Oman, Qatar and Kuwait will be represented at the Friday summit, the source said.Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he was “committed to US President Trump’s plan for the creation of a different Gaza”, also promising that after the war, “there will be neither Hamas nor the Palestinian Authority” ruling the territory.The United States, Israel’s top ally and weapons supplier, says it is open to alternative proposals from Arab governments, but Rubio has said for now, “the only plan is the Trump plan”.The proposal lacked detail but Trump said the Palestinians in Gaza — who number more than two million — would be resettled in other countries and the US would “take over” the territory.The United States has also been pushing for a historic deal in which Saudi Arabia would recognise Israel. In return, Riyadh demands the establishment of a Palestinian state — long opposed by Israeli leaders and potentially in contradiction to Trump’s Gaza plan.On Monday, Egypt hosted the latest meeting of the Global Alliance for the Implementation of the Two-State Solution, which initially gathered in Saudi Arabia last year.Egypt’s foreign ministry stressed Cairo’s “full commitment to implementing the two-state solution” to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and “the necessity of establishing an independent Palestinian state”.In Riyadh, Rubio was accompanied by National Security Advisor Mike Waltz and special Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff.Witkoff had teamed up with an outgoing envoy from former president Joe Biden to push the ceasefire deal between Israel and Palestinian militants Hamas which took effect on January 19 — a day before Trump assumed office.Trump’s Gaza proposal has strained that truce, the first phase of which would expire in early March.According to Israeli media, the security cabinet convened on Monday evening to discuss phase two of the fragile ceasefire. The second phase has yet to be negotiated.- Hoping truce holds -Netanyahu said he spoke with Rubio about “Trump’s bold vision for Gaza’s future” — which experts have warned would violate international law — and about ways to “ensure that vision becomes a reality”.On Monday evening, Israeli Defence Minister Israel Katz said a special agency would be established for the “voluntary departure” of Gazans.A vocal opponent of stopping the war, far-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, said he “will demand a vote” by ministers on Trump’s plan and that Israel must “issue a clear ultimatum to Hamas -– immediately release all hostages, leave Gaza for other countries, and lay down your arms”.Since the truce took effect on January 19, a total of 19 Israeli hostages have been released in exchange for more than 1,100 Palestinian prisoners.Out of 251 people seized in Hamas’s October 7, 2023 attack on Israel, which sparked the war, 70 remain in Gaza, including 35 the Israeli military says are dead.The families of the hostages still in Gaza on Monday marked 500 days of their captivity, holding pictures of their loved ones and banners reading “Home Now”.Dozens marched towards Netanyahu’s residence in Jerusalem before they met lawmakers in parliament.- 500 days -“My eyes burn from the tears I have shed for the past 500 days,” said Einav Tzangauker, whose son Matan is among those held in Gaza.Five foreign hostages are among those still held captive. They include Nepali agriculture student Bipin Joshi, 24, who risked his life to save friends, including Himanchal Kattel, at the farm where they worked.”People should talk more about him,” Kattel said.In Gaza, over the 500 days since Hamas’s attack sparked the war, Mohammed Abu Mursa said he has known only “humiliation, suffering and bloodshed”.Abu Mursa and his family have been displaced more than a dozen times trying to survive.”I just hope the ceasefire holds and that the exchange of prisoners continues,” he said.The Gaza war has rippled across the Middle East, triggering violence in Yemen and Lebanon, where Iran backs militant groups.An Israeli strike Monday in the southern Lebanese city of Sidon killed a Hamas commander, Mohammed Shahine, whom the Israeli military accused of planning attacks.Hamas’s attack on Israel resulted in the deaths of 1,211 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally of Israeli official figures.Israel’s retaliatory campaign has killed at least 48,271 people in Gaza, the majority of them civilians, according to figures from the health ministry in the Hamas-run territory that the United Nations considers reliable.burs/jsa/it/ysm

Top US and Russian diplomats will meet in Saudi Arabia on Tuesday for talks on resetting the countries’ fractured relations and making a tentative start on trying to end the Ukraine war.Both sides played down the chances that the first high-level meeting between the countries since Moscow invaded Ukraine in 2022 would result in a breakthrough.Nevertheless, the very fact of the talks has triggered concern in Kyiv and Europe — left reeling by Washington’s dramatic diplomatic moves towards the Kremlin.Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on Monday accused Washington of wanting “to please” Russian President Valdimir Putin by “now saying things that are very favourable” to him.He previously revealed that Kyiv had not been invited to the discussions in Riyadh.Meanwhile, European leaders were gathering in Paris for emergency talks on how to respond to the radical pivot by the new US administration.Preparations for a possible summit between presidents Donald Trump and Putin are also set to be on the agenda.Trump is pushing for a swift resolution to the three-year conflict in Ukraine, while Moscow sees his outreach as a chance to gain concessions on some of its long-standing gripes about Washington’s military presence in Europe.Zelensky said Kyiv “did not know anything about” the talks in Riyadh, according to Ukrainian news agencies, and that it “cannot recognise any things or any agreements about us without us”.Moscow said ahead of the meeting that Putin and Trump wanted to move on from “abnormal relations” and that it saw no place for Europeans to be at any negotiating table.Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and senior Putin aide Yuri Ushakov, who arrived in Riyadh late on Monday according to images shown by the Rossiya 24 news channel, will meet with US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, National Security Advisor Mike Waltz and Special Envoy Steve Witkoff.- Possible Trump-Putin summit -Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters that the talks would be “primarily devoted to restoring the whole complex of Russian-American relations”, alongside discussions on “possible negotiations on a Ukrainian resolution, and organising a meeting between the two presidents”.Moscow, which for years has sought to roll back NATO’s presence in Europe, has made clear it wants to hold bilateral talks with the United States on a plethora of broad security issues, not just a possible Ukraine ceasefire.Before invading in February 2022, Putin was demanding the military alliance pull its troops, equipment and bases out of several eastern members that were under Moscow’s sphere of influence during the Cold War.The prospects of any talks leading to an agreement to halt the Ukraine fighting are unclear.Both Moscow and Washington have cast the meeting as the beginning of a potentially lengthy process.”I don’t think that people should view this as something that is about details or moving forward in some kind of a negotiation,” US State Department spokesperson Tammy Bruce said.Russia’s Ushakov told state media that the talks would discuss “how to start negotiations on Ukraine.””The tasks are more or less clear to us,” he added.Both Kyiv and Moscow have ruled out territorial concessions and Putin last year demanded Ukraine withdraw its troops from even more territory.Zelensky will travel to Turkey on Tuesday to discuss the conflict with President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, and then Saudi Arabia a day later.He does not plan to hold talks with either the US or Russian delegations, his spokesman said on Monday.Zelensky said last week he was prepared to meet Putin, but only after Kyiv and its allies had a common position on ending the war.- Europe is ‘weak’ -As European leaders gathered in Paris for an emergency security summit, Russia’s Lavrov on Monday said he saw no point in them taking part in any Ukraine talks.”I don’t know what they would do at the negotiating table… if they are going to sit at the negotiating table with the aim of continuing war, then why invite them there?,” he told a press conference in Moscow.  Germany on Monday said “direct contact between the Americans and the Russians is not a bad thing if it is about finding a way to a durable and lasting peace.”Moscow heads into the Saudi talks boosted by recent gains on the battlefield.Its better resourced troops are pushing Ukraine back across the 1,000-kilometre (620-mile) front line.Kyiv also faces the prospect of losing vital US military aid, long criticised by Trump, and being forced to rely on European backing.On Monday, Zelensky said that Europe’s military capabilities were “weak”.Russia’s army on Monday said its forces had captured a small settlement in northeastern Ukraine and also retaken control of a village in its western Kursk region, where Ukraine launched a shock counter-offensive last August. burs-jc/cad/yad/bc/giv