More than 7000 of his citizens are dying every month in a bloody civil war but Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad has found time to join Instagram.
Assad, using the handle “syrianpresidency”, joined the photo-sharing network last week and had uploaded more than 50 photos – mostly shots of him greeting fans or his wife Asma al-Assad talking to citizens.
Syria’s civil war has claimed more than 100,000 lives in two years and Assad has been accused of using chemical weapons on his own people in the northern village of Khan al-Assal.
Syrian government troops launched an assault Wednesday to retake control of the village, which is on the outskirts of the embattled city of Aleppo, more than a week after it was captured by rebels. More than 150 government soldiers were killed when the rebels took the village, according to Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.
The purported chemical attack on March 19 killed at least 30 people but Assad’s regime and the rebels have blamed each other for that attack.
Assad has 1,200 followers on Instagram. Justin Bieber has 10 million.