Pictures of colourful Damascus markets, squad photos at pool parties, or panoramas of festival crowds holding glow sticks were not what Syria’s state news agency got when it tweeted asking for Syrians to share their summer snaps.

Instead, users have been sharing photographs of the country’s conflict in response to the tweet sent out this week as part of a social media campaign from Sana English.

Now that #summer is upon us, snap us your moments of summer in #Syria using the hashtag #SummerInSyria pic.twitter.com/sutvUuZUoj — SANA English (@SANA_English) June 22, 2015

Users have hijacked the hashtag to share photos of injured civilians, devastation and bombsites from the four-year-old conflict.

Official Jargon, an account interested in the design and interpretation of propaganda, posted:

Others used sarcasm to highlight the contrast of the request to the realities of life in Syria:

#SummerInSyria is a once in a lifetime opportunity to watch AND TOUCH 🎆🎆 fireworks🎆 🎆 falling from the sky pic.twitter.com/z6w63nzUSj — Amoola (@amaal_dani) June 23, 2015

Another user drew attention to the destruction of historical sites:

Come and enjoy your #SummerInSyria You will see many historic cities. In fact most of Syria cities became historic pic.twitter.com/TbZodBmxC8 — Abed Alhamdou عابد (@abedalhamdo) June 23, 2015

An image from Yarmouk, a Palestinian refugee camp on the edge of the capital, Damascus, demonstrating the sheer scale of the crisis was also tweeted:

But it was not just local users and activists making use of the hashtag, as the US embassy in Syria sent political tweets and shared videos showing regime-inflicted destruction:

Asad regime barrel bombs Al Bayan hospital in #Aleppo, kills 5 nurses + injures 1 doctor. #SummerInSyria #Syria pic.twitter.com/iqlRPhhEk3 — U.S. Embassy Syria (@USEmbassySyria) June 23, 2015

Other tweets from the Damascus-based news agency included: “Temperatures below average tomorrow, sunny/partly cloudy in general, chance of drizzle over the coast.”

In another, a photo is shared from a local football match in Sweida province, purporting to be “honouring [the] army”.

Syria has been in turmoil after a violent crackdown on Arab spring protests against the Assad family’s four-decade rule led to civil war.



More than 210,000 people, most of them civilians, have been killed in the conflict, according to the UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, while more than half the country’s population of 22 million have fled their homes.

The conflict has also seen the rise of Islamic State (Isis), which has fought both regime forces and opposition groups and become the target of a US-led air campaign.

Human rights groups such as Amnesty International have accused the Assad regime of committing numerous abuses, including crimes against humanity.

