The gruesome events happening in eastern Syria bogged me down today. Since I write reports about the Syrian conflict for my job, I need to know what’s going on in the eastern part of the country in quite a lot of detail. Most days when I log on to start work around 8:00, I open up my usual Syria news sites and conflict trackers alongside my work email and Microsoft Teams messages.

This morning I logged on earlier than usual for a 7:00 am meeting. (A downside of having colleagues across many time zones.) My colleague in Syria had sent a message to my team’s group chat about a killing that had happened overnight.