Bel Trew is The Independent’s Middle East and North Africa correspondent. She has covered the region since the start of the 2011 Arab Spring, reporting across the Middle East and North Africa, from Morocco to Yemen. Since joining The Independent in 2018, she launched an eight-part text and multimedia series on water conflict called Water Wars, that she aims to turn into a podcast. The series, which includes reporting from across Iraq, Jordan, the Gulf, Gaza and South Sudan, hopes to spark a paradigm shift in attitudes towards the environment and security responses to key resources like water.

Prior to working with The Independent Bel was a print and broadcast journalist with The Times anchored in Egypt for seven years, until she was arrested from the street during an interview and deported from Cairo in February 2018. During her Egypt years, she also covered the last two wars between Israel and Gaza, followed the emergence of Isis in Tunisia and covered illegal migration extensively including being shortlisted for her work on rescue boats in the Mediterranean. On the side, she also ran an English-language news website on Egypt and a separate one on Libya, and acted as an analyst on the two countries. Before becoming a foreign correspondent, in another life, she was a features journalist in London working for Tatler magazine, and then other publications including The Evening Standard. Bel was born in the UAE, and grew up between the Gulf and the Baltic States.

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