Syria's new leader is saying that he will dissolve the many rebel factions there and absorb them into the new ministry of defense. That new leader is Ahmed al-Sharaa. And if he can achieve unity, he'll do something that Syria's former dictator, Bashar al-Assad, never could.

NPR's Leila Fadel, Jane Arraf, and Ruth Sherlock share their reporting from Syria more than a week after the fall of the Assad regime.

Edition host Leila Fadel reports from Damascus, in the first week in a half-century that the Assad family did not rule the country.

People in Syria are looking for their relatives and friends in prisons, hospitals and morgues. The U.N. estimates over a 100,00 people have gone missing in Syria under the Assad regime.

The road to Damascus tells the story of a new Syria emerging from 54 years of authoritarian rule by one family, the Assads. Today's Syria is no longer theirs.

NPR's Leila Fadel speaks with Stephen Rapp, a former U.S. ambassador-at-large for war crimes issues, on his trip to Syria to help preserve evidence from mass graves.

Survivors of the Syrian regime's chemical attacks are free now speak about how they lost their families. We meet people who endured attacks that Syria's former president used to stay in power.

When Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad fled the country, members of his own minority sect say he left them impoverished and stained with his legacy.

A possible ceasefire in the 14-month long war between Israel and Hamas is gaining momentum. There are signs that the two sides are closer to making a deal, but many sticking points remain.

In some ways, Syria is a land of ghosts, and the job of speaking for the dead falls to their loved ones and the new Syrian government. Leila Molana-Allen reports from the suburbs of Damascus. A warning, images in this story are disturbing. Syrians are ...

Syria's military said it had carried out a "temporary troop withdrawal" in Aleppo to prepare for a counteroffensive against "terrorists". And it admitted insurgents had entered large parts of the ...

Leila Fadel is a national correspondent for NPR based in Los Angeles, covering issues of culture, diversity, and race. Most recently, she was NPR's international correspondent based in Cairo and ...