Germany's Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock officially reopened her country's embassy in war-ravaged Syria during a one-day visit to Damascus on Thursday.
Baerbock reopened the mission, which closed in 2012 amid the Syrian civil war, on her second visit there since the fall of president Bashar al-Assad over three months ago.
Her trip also came weeks after sectarian massacres claimed more than 1,500 lives on Syria's Mediterranean coast -- the heartland of Assad's Alawite minority.