The seven group winners will join nine teams that have already qualified for the finals through the FIFA U-17 World Cup Qatar 2026.

Syria's new authorities under interim President Ahmed al-Sharaa have sought to disband armed groups

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights war monitor has reported that 745 Alawite civilians were killed in Latakia and Tartus provinces.

Syrian authorities said the violence began when remnants loyal to Assad launched a deadly and well-planned attack on their forces on Thursday.

There were no immediate claim of responsibility for the attack.

Sharaa was appointed Wednesday to lead Syria for an unspecified transitional period

No group has claimed the four activists' abduction and they have not been heard from since.

Ankara-backed rebels played a key role in supporting Sharaa's Islamist group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), which headed a rebel alliance that seized Damascus on December 8, toppling longtime ruler Bashar al-Assad.

The seismic change in Syria is expected to yield deeper Turkish sway just as a change of US administration is raising questions over how long Washington will keep backing the country's Kurdish-led forces.

Assad fled Syria following a lightning offensive spearheaded by the Islamist Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), more than 13 years after his crackdown on democracy protests precipitated one of the deadliest wars of the century.

Darwish was detained for months by one of the most feared branches of the former government's many-tentacled intelligence services.

Syrians will not miss Assad, a brutal ruler who failed his people.

The offensive, which took just 10 days to sweep across Syria and take the capital Damascus, stunned the world and brought an end to more than a half a century of brutal rule by the Assad clan.

"We would like to see the situation in the country stabilised somehow as soon as possible," Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters.

"Their human capital, their experience will allow the country to flourish," Bashir said in an interview published Wednesday.

The Kremlin said on Monday that President Vladimir Putin had made the decision to grant asylum in Russia to Assad

Mohamed al-Bashir has been appointed caretaker prime minister of the transitional Syrian government until March 1, 2025, he said in a televised statement on Tuesday

Assad fled Syria as an Islamist-led rebel alliance swept into the capital Damascus, bringing to an end on Sunday to five decades of brutal rule by his clan.

"There is a sea change," said Robert Petit, a Canadian prosecutor and legal scholar who heads the United Nations investigative body known as the International Impartial and Independent Mechanism (IIIM) on Syria.

The United Nations Security Council met behind closed doors late on Monday, and diplomats said they were still in shock at how quickly Assad's overthrow unfolded over 12 days