ABBY SEWELL

News director, Lebanon, Syria and Iraq

Sewell is the Associated Press news director for Lebanon, Syria and Iraq. She joined the AP in 2022 but has been based in the region since 2016, reporting and guiding coverage on some of its most significant news stories.
Bedouin fighters stand in front a burned shop at Mazraa village on the outskirts of Sweida city, during clashes between the Bedouin clans and Druze militias, southern Syria, Friday, July 18, 2025. (AP Photo/Ghaith Alsayed)
Druze-Bedouin clashes flare up again after government forces pull out of southern Syria
Renewed clashes between Druze militias and Bedouin tribes in southern Syria have displaced nearly 80,000 people.
 
The Syrian Defense Ministry building sits heavily damaged after alleged Israeli airstrikes in Damascus, Syria, Wednesday, July 16, 2025. (AP Photo/Ghaith Alsayed)
Key players in Syria’s latest eruption of violence
Clashes that shook southern Syria this week have killed hundreds of people, including civilians, and drawn in an array of both local and international players, harking back to the dynamics of the country’s nearly 14-year civil war.
 
A Syrian government soldier who was injured in Sweida city during clashes between the Syrian government forces and Druze militias, gets treated at a clinic in Busra al-Harir village, in southern Syria, Tuesday, July 15, 2025. (AP Photo/Omar Albam)
Syria announces ceasefire after sectarian clashes, but more fighting and abuse alleged
Syria’s defense minister has announced a ceasefire just hours after government forces entered a key city in the volatile Sweida province.
 
Red Crescent volunteers carry a government soldier injured in Sweida city during clashes between the government forces and Druze militias at a clinic in Busra al-Harir village, southern Syria, Tuesday, July 15, 2025. (AP Photo/Omar Albam)
Who are the Druze in Syria, and why are they clashing with government forces?
Clashes between Syrian government forces and Druze armed groups have escalated, drawing Israeli intervention and raising fears of a breakdown in the country’s fragile postwar order.
 
Syrian government forces pass next of a dead fighter from Druze militias, at Mazraa village on the outskirts of the city of Sweida, where clashes erupted between Sunni Bedouin clans and Druze militias, southern Syria, Monday, July 14, 2025. (AP Photo/Ghaith Alsayed)
Israel strikes military tanks in southern Syria, where government forces clash with Druze militias
Israel has struck military tanks in southern Syria, where government forces and Bedouin tribes clash with Druze militias.
 
U.S. Ambassador to Turkey and Special Envoy to Syria Tom Barrack speaks during an interview with The Associated Press at the airport in Damascus, Syria, Wednesday, July 9, 2025. (AP Photo/Ghaith Alsayed)
Syria’s government and Kurds still at odds over merging forces after latest talks, US envoy says
A U.S. envoy says that Syria’s central government and the Kurds remain at odds over plans on merging their forces after the latest round of talks. U.S.
 
Smoke rises following an explosion near destroyed buildings inside the Gaza Strip, as seen from southern Israel, on Sunday, July 6, 2025. (Photo/Ohad Zwigenberg)
New details emerge on Gaza ceasefire proposal as Netanyahu heads to the White House
New details have emerged of the latest Gaza ceasefire proposal submitted by mediators to Hamas, while Israel has sent a negotiating team to Qatar ahead of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s White House visit.
 
A Syrian man takes pictures with his mobile phone of Iranian missiles on their way toward Israel, as they pass over Damascus airspace, Syria, Friday, June 13, 2025. (AP Photo/Omar Sanadiki)
War-weary Syrians and Lebanese watch from the sidelines as missiles fly in Israel-Iran conflict
In a park overlooking Damascus, 25-year-old Khaldoun Hallak has spent the past few evenings with his friends, drinking yerba mate, snacking on nuts, smoking hookah pipes and watching the sky for missiles streaking overhead.
 
Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, center, lays a wreath at the tomb of slain Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah in the southern suburbs of Beirut, Lebanon, Tuesday, June 3, 2025. (AP Photo/Hassan Ammar)
Why some key Tehran allies have stayed out of the Israel-Iran conflict
The Lebanese militant group Hezbollah was long considered Iran’s first line of defense in case of a war with Israel.
 
A guard inspects an engraved stone, originally found at a Byzantine underground tomb complex believed to be over 1,500 years old and uncovered by a contractor during the reconstruction of a war-damaged house and brought to a museum yard in Maarat al-Numan, Syria, Friday, May 30, 2025. (AP Photo/Omar Albam)
A contractor stumbles upon a Byzantine tomb complex under a destroyed Syrian house
A contractor digging into the earth where the rubble of a destroyed house had been cleared away in northern Syria stumbled across a surprise: the remains of an underground Byzantine tomb complex believed to be more than 1,500 years old.
 
A boy carries bricks as he helps to restore a home in al-Qaryatayn, eastern part of Syria's Homs province, Tuesday, June 3, 2025. (AP Photo/Ghaith Alsayed)
Syrian families return home in time for Eid al-Adha after years in notorious displacement camp
Yasmine al-Saleh has two occasions to celebrate this year: the Eid al-Adha holiday and her family’s return home after nine years in a notorious displacement camp in the Syrian desert.
 
Flames and smoke rise following an Israeli airstrike on Dahiyeh in the southern suburb of Beirut, Lebanon, Thursday, June 5, 2025. (AP Photo/Hassan Ammar)
Israel strikes Beirut’s suburbs to target what it says is Hezbollah drone production
The Israeli military has struck several sites in Beirut’s southern suburbs that it said held underground facilities used by Hezbollah for drone production.
 
This screen grab from video shows International Atomic Energy Agency Director General Rafael Mariano Grossi giving an interview in Damascus, Syria, Wednesday, June 4, 2025. (AP Photo/Abdelrahman Shaheen)
Syria will give inspectors immediate access to suspected former nuclear sites, UN watchdog tells AP
The new Syrian government has agreed to give inspectors from the United Nations’ nuclear watchdog access to suspected former nuclear sites immediately.
 
This is a locator map for Syria with its capital, Damascus. (AP Photo)
Israel says rockets fired from Syria for the first time since Bashar Assad’s fall
The Israeli army says two rockets have been fired from Syria into open areas in the Israel-controlled Golan Heights.
 
Archaeologists work at an archaeological site where researchers uncovered massive earthen structures, believed to have been built with slave labor, and found that their construction spanned several centuries, near Basra, Iraq, Friday, Jan. 28, 2022. (AP Photo/Jaafar Jotheri)
Archaeologists find new evidence of ancient slave labor in southern Iraq
A system of thousands of ridges and canals across a floodplain in southern Iraq has long been believed to be the remnant of a massive agricultural system built by slave labor.
 
Trucks and vans carrying around 60 displaced families arrive in their village after more than five years in the Atmeh camps near the Syrian-Turkish border, in Kafr Sijna, south of Idlib, Syria, Sunday, May 18, 2025. (AP Photo/Ghaith Alsayed)
EU lifts most Syria sanctions but slaps new ones on alleged culprits in attacks on Alawite civilians
The European Union has lifted a wide range of sanctions on Syria, but slapped new ones on people it says participated in attacks on Alawite civilians during a wave of violence in the Syrian coastal region in March.
 
In this photo provided by the Saudi Ministry of Media, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, right, greets Syria's interim President Ahmad al-Sharaa during his arrival at the royal palace in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, Feb. 2, 2025. (Saudi Ministry of Media via AP, File)
Assad’s fall in Syria turned Turkey and Saudi Arabia from rivals to partners. Will it last?
Turkey and Saudi Arabia are two Sunni powerhouses that have had a complicated and often contentious relationship over the years.
 
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, centre, leaves after his meeting with Lebanese Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri, left background, in Beirut, Lebanon, Thursday, May 22, 2025. (AP Photo/Hussein Malla)
Lebanon starts process to disarm Palestinian factions in refugee camps
A group tasked with making a plan to remove weapons held by Palestinian factions in Lebanon’s refugees camps is beginning to hash out a timetable and mechanism for disarming the groups.
 
Syrian Foreign Minister Asaad al-Shibani attends the 34th Arab League summit, in Baghdad, Iraq, Saturday, May 17, 2025. (Thaier Al-Sudani/Pool via AP)
Trump administration takes first steps in easing sanctions on Syria
The Trump administration has granted Syria sweeping exemptions from sanctions. The move Friday is a big first step toward fulfilling the president’s pledge to lift a half-century of penalties on a country shattered by 13 years of civil war.
 
Fighters from the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah train in southern Lebanon, May 21, 2023. (AP Photo/Hassan Ammar, File)
Will a weakened Hezbollah in Lebanon disarm?
There is increasing pressure for the Lebanon-based militant group Hezbollah to disarm. It has been the region’s most powerful nonstate armed group, but it was badly weakened in the recent war with Israel.
 
Syria's Foreign Minister Asaad Al-Shibani holds the Syrian Flag during a ceremony where the Syrian flag was added to the 100 flags flying in line at United Nations Headquarters on Friday, April 25, 2025. (AP Photo/Kena Betancur)
New Syrian foreign minister attends UN Security Council in first US appearance since Assad’s fall
Syrian Foreign Minister Asaad al-Shibani has attended a U.N. Security Council briefing, raising his country’s new flag at the international body and saying he represents a “new Syria.”
 
U.S. congressmen Cory Mills (R-FL), left, and Martin Stutzman (R-IN), second from right, meet Mor Ignatius Aphrem II, a Syrian-American Christian prelate serving as the Patriarch of the Syriac Orthodox Church in Damascus Friday, April 18, 2025. Mills and Stutzman arrived on an unofficial visit organized by a Syrian-American nonprofit, the first visit by U.S. legislators since the fall of former Syrian President Bashar Assad in December.(AP Photo/Omar Sanadiki)
Congress members pay an unofficial visit to Syria as US mulls sanctions relief
A pair of Republican Congress members have arrived in the Syrian capital on an unofficial visit organized by a Syrian-American nonprofit, the first by U.S. legislators since the fall of former Syrian President Bashar Assad in December.
 
In this photo released by the Lebanese Government press office, Lebanese Prime Minister Nawaf Salam, left, shakes hands with Syrian interim President Ahmad al-Sharaa in Damascus, Syria, Monday, April 14, 2025. (Lebanese Government press office via AP)
Lebanese president says Hezbollah disarmament will come through dialogue not ‘force’
Lebanon’s president says the disarmament of the militant group Hezbollah will come through negotiations as part of a national defense strategy and not through “force.”
 
Mohammed Othman, a Palestinian survivor of the April 13, 1975 attack on a bus carrying Palestinians that sparked Lebanon's civil war, prays over the graves of those killed that day, at the Palestine Martyrs Cemetery, in Beirut, Lebanon, Friday, April 11, 2025. (AP Photo/Hussein Malla)
50 years after Lebanon’s civil war began, a bullet-riddled bus stands as a reminder
What happened on April 13, 1975, would change the course of Lebanon. An attack on a bus in Beirut plunged the country into 15 years of civil war.
 
A man walks next to a destroyed car and damaged buildings at the site that was hit by an Israeli airstrike in Dahiyeh, in the southern suburb of Beirut, Lebanon, Friday March 28, 2025.(AP Photo/Hussein Malla)
How will the latest strikes between Israel and Lebanon affect a tenuous ceasefire?
An already fragile ceasefire between Israel and the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah appeared to be on shakier ground after rockets fired from Lebanon into northern Israel triggered Israeli airstrikes in the suburbs of Beirut.
 
Syria's interim President Ahmad al-Sharaa, looks on during a joint press conference with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan at the presidential palace in Ankara, Turkey, Feb. 4, 2025. (AP Photo/Francisco Seco, File)
Syria flashes signs of peril and promise in a week of violence and diplomacy
After Syria’s longtime autocratic ruler was toppled late last year, the man who led rebel groups to victory immediately faced a new challenge: unifying the country after more than a decade of civil war.
 
Syrian families who fled the clashes in Syria hold their luggages as they cross a river marking the border between Syria and northern Lebanon near the village of Heker al-Daher in Akkar province, Lebanon, Tuesday, March 11, 2025. (AP Photo/Hussein Malla)
Syrian Kurds celebrate deal with Damascus as coastal residents remain wary after violence
In northeast Syria, revelers took to the streets after the announcement of a breakthrough deal between the central government in Damascus and local Kurdish-led authorities.
 
Iraq fears power cuts as US ends sanctions waiver for electricity purchases from Iran
The United States has declined to renew a waiver that had allowed Iraq to buy electricity from Iran without running afoul of sanctions, the U.S.
 
Reinforcement Syrian security forces deploy in Latakia, Syria, Friday, March 7, 2025. (AP Photo/Omar Albam)
Clashes in Syria between government forces and Assad loyalists kill more than 200
A war monitor says two days of clashes between Syrian security forces and gunmen loyal to former President Bashar Assad have left more than 200 people dead.
 
A woman looks at photos of slain hostages (bottom row, L-R) Ariel Bibas, his mother Shiri, his brother, Kfir and Oded Lifshitz, right, that are displayed in the dining hall at Kibbutz Nir Oz, in southern Israel, on Tuesday, Feb. 25, 2025. (AP Photo/Ohad Zwigenberg)
Israel and Hamas agree on new exchange, leaving fragile ceasefire intact
Israeli and Hamas officials say they have reached an agreement to exchange the bodies of dead hostages for the release of hundreds of Palestinian prisoners.
 
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