Syrian officials on Thursday raised the country’s flag over the southern city of Daraa, where the uprising against President Bashar al-Assad that led to the country’s seven-year civil war began. Syrian state television said officials mounted the flag at the ruins of the city square. Anti-government protests began in the city during the 2011 Arab Spring, and Assad’s government responded with a military crackdown. Ahmad Masalmeh, an activist formerly in Daraa, said many rebels in the city accepted the government’s amnesty offer. Those who refused the deal will face exile, he said.

This is Congo: Mortar rounds fired from a military truck scream in flight, sending villagers on a dirt road diving into the brush for cover. A water tanker pulls into a tent-strewn displacement camp, where a throng carrying buckets and pans rushes to meet it. A woman takes a bag of semiprecious gemstones by motorcycle across the border for an illegal transaction.

Syrians “very likely” suffered from attacks using the nerve agent sarin and the toxic chemical chlorine in early 2017, according to findings released by the global chemical weapons watchdog on Wednesday. The Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons did not investigate who launched the attack in Hama province, but intelligence analysts have blamed Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s forces for all attacks involving chemical agents.

The Israeli military on Thursday hit an unprecedented number of Iranian targets in neighboring Syria hours after Iran staged a rocket attack on Israeli bases in the Golan Heights. Israel said it targeted Iran’s weapons storage, logistic sites, and intelligence centers in Syria in its most extensive attack since the 1973 war with Syria. The violence started when Iran’s Al Quds force fired 20 rockets at Israeli positions in the Israeli-controlled Golan Heights. Israeli military spokesman Lt. Col. Jonathan Conricus said it intercepted four of the rockets while others missed their targets.

An overnight missile strike in northern Syria killed at least 26 pro-government fighters, the majority of them Iranians. The U.K.-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the attack targeted an arms depot and surface-to-surface missiles at the Brigade 47 base. The observatory said the death toll could still rise, with 60 fighters wounded and several others still missing.

A chemical weapons team on Saturday collected samples from the Syrian town of Douma, where residents reported what appeared to be a chlorine gas attack earlier this month. The Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) confirmed the team collected samples for testing.

Gunmen in the Syrian town of Douma opened fire on a United Nations security team visiting the site of a suspected chemical weapons attack, forcing it to turn back. The attack caused yet another delay in the fact-finding mission to verify the chemical assault. Ahmet Uzumcu, who heads the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, said the team on Tuesday returned to the Syrian capital, Damascus, after gunmen shot at them and detonated an explosive device.