DAMASCUS:
Celebrations erupted around Syria and crowds ransacked President Bashar Al-Assad’s luxurious home on Sunday after Islamist-led rebels swept into Damascus and declared he had fled the country, in a spectacular end to five decades of Baath party rule. Assad’s key backer Russia said he had resigned from the presidency and left Syria. ”Assad and members of his family have arrived in Moscow,” a Kremlin source told the TASS and Ria Novosti news agencies. “Russia granted them asylum on humanitarian grounds,” he added..”
Rebel factions aired a statement on Syrian state television, urging fighters and citizens to safeguard the “property of the free Syrian state”. State TV broadcast a message proclaiming the “victory of the great Syrian revolution”. The Islamist leader of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham group Abu Mohammed Al-Jolani said there was no room for turning back. “The future is ours,” Jolani said in a statement read on state TV after his forces took over Damascus. Jolani, now using his real name Ahmed Al-Sharaa, later visited Damascus’s landmark Umayyad Mosque, as crowds greeted him with smiles and embraces.
AFPTV footage showed a column of smoke rising from central Damascus, and AFP correspondents in the city saw dozens of men, women and children wandering through Assad’s home after it had been looted. The rooms of the residence had been left completely empty, save some furniture and a portrait of Assad discarded on the floor, while an entrance hall at the presidential palace not far away had been torched. “I can’t believe I’m living this moment,” tearful Damascus resident Amer Batha told AFP by phone. “We’ve been waiting a long time for this day,” he said, adding: “We are starting a new history for Syria.”
Assad’s departure comes less than two weeks after HTS challenged more than five decades of Assad family rule with a lightning offensive. “After 50 years of oppression under Baath rule, and 13 years of crimes and tyranny and displacement… we announce today the end of this dark period and the start of a new era for Syria,” the rebel factions said on Telegram.
While there has been no communication from Assad or his entourage on his whereabouts, Prime Minister Mohammed Al-Jalali said he was ready to cooperate with “any leadership chosen by the Syrian people”. The head of war monitor the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, Rami Abdel Rahman, told AFP: “Assad left Syria via Damascus international airport before the army security forces left” the facility.
UN war crimes investigators on Sunday described Assad’s fall as a “historic new beginning” for Syrians, urging those taking charge to ensure the “atrocities” committed under his rule are not repeated. The rapid developments came just hours after HTS said it had captured the strategic city of Homs. Homs was the third major city seized by the rebels, who began their advance on Nov 27. US President Joe Biden was keeping a close eye on the “extraordinary events” unfolding in Syria, the White House said. US president-elect Donald Trump said that Assad had “fled his country” after losing Russia’s backing.
Before Sunday’s announcements, residents had described to AFP a state of panic in Damascus, but morning saw chants and cheering, with celebratory gunfire and shouts of “Syria is ours and not the Assad family’s”. At the dawn call to prayer, some mosques broadcast religious chants usually reserved for festive occasions, while also urging residents to stay at home. On Sunday afternoon the rebels announced a curfew in the capital until 5:00 am (0200 GMT) Monday. The commander of Syria’s US-backed, Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), which controls much of northeast Syria, hailed as “historic” the fall of Assad’s “authoritarian regime”.
The Observatory on Sunday said the Zionist entity struck Syrian army weapons depots Sunday on the outskirts of Damascus. Assad’s rule had for years been supported by Lebanese group Hezbollah, whose forces “vacated their positions around Damascus”, a source close to the group said Sunday. Zionist Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the overthrow of Assad was a “historic day in the… Middle East” and the fall of a “central link in Iran’s axis of evil”. “This is a direct result of the blows we have inflicted on Iran and Hezbollah, Assad’s main supporters,” he added.
Netanyahu earlier said he had ordered the Zionist military to “seize” a demilitarized buffer zone on the border with Syria. He said a 50-year-old “disengagement agreement” between the two countries had collapsed and “Syrian forces have abandoned their positions”. The announcement, which Netanyahu made while visiting the Zionist-occupied Golan Heights which abut the buffer zone, came after the military said it had deployed forces to the area.
The UN envoy for Syria said the country was at “a watershed moment”, while Turkey, which has historically backed the opposition, called for a “smooth transition”. Iran, a key backer of Assad throughout the civil war, said it expected “friendly” ties with Syria to continue, even as its embassy in Damascus was vandalized. An AFP photographer saw ransacked offices, with shattered glass on the floor and broken furniture in the building in Damascus’s upscale Mazzeh area, also home to other embassies and United Nations offices. People loaded looted items onto trucks outside, the photographer said.
A senior United Arab Emirates official urged Syrians on Sunday to collaborate to avert chaos. “We hope that the Syrians will work together, that we don’t just see another episode of impending chaos,” presidential adviser Anwar Gargash said at the Manama Dialogue in Bahrain. Following speculation about Assad’s whereabouts, Gargash refused to confirm or deny speculation he would take shelter in the UAE.
“When people ask, ‘where is Bashar Al-Assad going to?’, this is really at the end of the day a footnote in history,” he told the forum. “I don’t think it’s important. As I said, ultimately this is a footnote really to bigger events,” the Emirati official added when pressed on the question by journalists. Gargash blamed Assad’s downfall on a failure of politics and said he had not used the “lifeline” offered to him by various Arab countries before, including the UAE.
Since the start of the rebel offensive, at least 826 people, mostly combatants but also including 111 civilians, have been killed, the Observatory said. Syria’s war killed more than 500,000 people, and forced half of the population to flee their homes. “I can barely remember Syria,” said Reda Al-Khedr, who was only five years old when he and his mother escaped Syria’s Homs in 2014. “But now we’re going to go home to a liberated Syria,” he told AFP in Cairo. – Agencies
