Tulsi Gabbard is expected to face questions on her 2017 visit to Syria at her confirmation hearing for director of national intelligence Thursday.

Tulsi Gabbard is expected to face tough questions about her past comments about Russia, Syria and a key government surveillance program as lawmakers vet her to lead the nation’s intelligence service

The leader of Syria’s former rebels who toppled President Bashar Assad last month was named the country’s interim president on Wednesday as former insurgents also cancelled the existing constitution,

The new leadership of the country said the rebel coalition leader, Ahmed al-Shara, would serve as president during a transitional period.

Sharaa, a rebel once aligned with al-Qaida, as Syria's president “in the transitional phase,” came after a meeting of the former insurgent factions in Damascus, the Syrian capital.

A delegation of Russian officials is in Damascus, Russian state news agency RIA Novosti reported. It is the first such visit to Syria since the fall in December of former President Bashar Assad, an ally of Moscow.

Russia’s deputy foreign minister and a special envoy arrived in Damascus. Theirs was the first such visit since President Bashar al-Assad fled the country, according to Russian state news.

The first Russian official delegation to visit Syria since the toppling of long-term Moscow ally Bashar al-Assad has arrived in Damascus, Russian news agencies reported on Tuesday. The visit comes with Moscow keen to secure the fate of two military bases there and after Russian President Vladimir Putin denied that Moscow had suffered a strategic "defeat" in the Middle East following the fall of Assad.