Ahmed Al-Sharaa meets Turkish delegation headed by Ibrahim Kalin, head of country's national intelligence organization - Anadolu Ajansı

Syrian Foreign Minister Asaad Hassan al-Shibani said on Wednesday that the country will open its economy to foreign investment and that Damascus is also working on energy and electricity partnerships with Gulf states.

( MENAFN - Nam News Network) ABU DHABI, Jan 18 (NNN-WAM) – United Arab Emirates (UAE) President, sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan reiterated the UAE's commitment to Syria's independence and Sovereignty over its entire territory, during a phone call yesterday with Ahmed Al-Sharaa, Syria's de facto leader.

Sharaa, formerly known as Abu Mohammad al-Jolani, has been named as Syria’s president for a transitional period.

Syria's de facto leader Ahmed al-Sharaa was declared president for a transitional phase on Wednesday, tightening his grip on power.

No country has as much to gain from a stable Syria as Turkey, and few have as much to lose if it implodes. Turkey is home to more than 3m Syrian refugees, and wants Syria to be safe enough for many to return.

United Arab Emirates billionaire Khalaf Ahmad Al Habtoor, who this week scrapped his investments in Lebanon, said the country was still not safe and that he had been threatened with being "slaughtered and killed" last year.

The Saudi state news agency SPA said the plane carried critical humanitarian assistance, including food, shelter, and medical supplies, for the Syrian people. It is the 15th plane shipment dispatched by the oil-rich kingdom to Syria since Assad’s fall last month.

"The first Turkish Airlines passenger plane landed at Damascus International Airport after a hiatus of some 13 years, with Syrian passengers on board," Syria's official news agency SANA reported. Eksi told reporters that Turkish Airlines would operate three flights to Syria a week.

Syria’s de facto leader, Ahmed al-Sharaa, on Wednesday abolished the country’s constitution and declared himself president during a meeting of armed factions in Damascus.

He had spent the day with the leaders of Syria’s myriad armed factions, trying to persuade them to disband. Over seven weeks after the fall of Damascus, the fate of these groups is still uncertain. His aides claim that all militias will be dissolved and then absorbed into a new national army.

For the past ten years, the Cairo office of Russian state media outlets RIA Novosti and Sputnik has centralised their international news coverage in  Arabic. These outlets capitalise on criticism of Western media coverage to amplify the Kremlin’s narrative in the region.