Hadeel Al-Shalchi

Hadeel Al-Shalchi is NPR's International Correspondent based in Istanbul.
 
Al-Shalchi joined NPR in 2020 as an editor on Weekend Edition and was a reporter with the International Desk covering the Israel-Hamas war. She was one of the first journalists to report from Syria after the fall of the Assad regime where she produced on-the-ground coverage that combined rigorous journalism with human-centered narratives that included an exclusive. More recently, she was in Beirut covering Israel's renewed war against Hezbollah.
 
Before joining NPR, Al-Shalchi covered the Middle East for 12 years for The Associated Press and Reuters, living in Cairo, Beirut, and Tripoli, Libya. She traveled the region extensively during the Arab Spring, reporting on the wars in Libya and Syria. She began her career as a newsreader and reporter at the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation in Ottawa.
 
An Iraqi Canadian, Al-Shalchi was born in Kuwait, raised in Abu Dhabi, and went to high school and university in Canada. She has an undergraduate degree in chemical engineering from the University of Ottawa and a master's degree in digital journalism from New York University. She is fluent in three Arabic dialects and speaks conversational French. She is an avid powerlifter and working towards a certificate to become a personal trainer.