"I was hanging onto a thin thread of hope," says Nisrin Alasaad, a Syrian refugee in Austria, who explains "that hope suddenly disappeared" when the Austrian authorities announced on Monday that they were suspending asylum applications from Syrian refugees and preparing 'a deportation programme' for those who fled the civil war. The announcement came the day after the overthrow of Syria's president Bashar al-Assad by a number of rebel forces, bringing to an end more than half a century of brutal Assad family rule. "I'm still under threat there," says Alasaad, who has four children living in Turkey she had hoped to reunite with. IMAGES AND SOUNDBITES