Syrian President Bashar al-Assad is believed to have fled the country after his family ruled the rebels for 50 years. said he took his head after lightning progress was completed in just under two weeks.
Two senior Syrian officials told Reuters that Assad had fled Damascus, his destination unknown, while the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights war monitor said he had left the country, flying to Damascus airport ahead of an army of security forces. The reports could not be independently verified.
Syria’s leader was officially absent as Islamist rebels began an offensive against a small enclave in northern Syria, and within eleven days it appeared the Assad regime had pulled out.
Rebels said they had freed prisoners from the prison known as Sednaya in Damascus, as a symbol of the Assad regime’s brutality, when a video from Damascus shows a man climbing atop a hospital sign to cut off Assad’s face. In the central street of the capital, people climbed over the tanks.
In Syria’s second city, Aleppo, which was claimed by insurgent forces a week ago, popular songs from empty mosques are scattered here and there, interspersed with the sound of howls and cheers echoing through the rooftops.
The Assad family has ruled Syria since 1971, when Hafez al-Assad seized power in a military coup, before his son Bashar inherited the presidency in 2000. Their control of the country was enforced by an immense security state, crushing dissent across the breadth of the network. the detention of the seats and the regime was observed.
Bashar al-Assad suppressed a popular uprising against him in 2011, when Syrians first took the streets of major cities to retake their fall. What started as peaceful demonstrations later spread into a civil war, which is estimated to have he was killed more than 300,000 people were killed in ten years.
Assad willingly turned the full force of the state on his own people to maintain control, including killing the civilian population with airstrikes and the use of chemical weapons, including the deadly nerve agent sarin.
Today marks the end of Assad’s 54-year reign in Syria. This is the only regime I’ve known my whole life,” said doctor Zaher Sahloul, a Syrian-American doctor who organized medical missions into Syria, including hospitals in Aleppo that were targeted by Syrian and Russian airstrikes.
“I don’t cry often in my adult life but I did today. It was fourteen long years of horror. This moment is our Berlin Wall,” he said.
Intervention by Russia and Iran had allowed Assad to survive almost fourteen years of unrest and civil strife, leaving him in charge of a fractured state. The Syrian government had appeared inescapable, until the uprising was led by the masses Hayat Tahrir al-Sham He began to seize control of the major towns along the road that leads to Damascus.
As the insurgents moved closer along the road leading to the capital, rebel groups across southern Syria seized control of a swath of towns south of Damascus. Army opposition groups were closed in on three sides in the capital city, as Syrian army leaders resigned or fled. A video from Damascus shows soldiers quickly changing into civilian clothes through the streets of the city before dispersing.
Prime Minister Mohammed Ghazi Jalali said the government was ready to “extend its hand” to the opposition, offering to work with the transitional government in a video statement.
“I am in my house and I have not left, and this is because of my country,” Jalili said, not addressing Assad where.
Promising a “new Syria” in their speech, they said: “We are turning a page on the dark past and opening a new perspective on the future.”
As armed rebels have taken cities across the country, they have precipitated the opening of detention facilities where rights groups estimate at least 100,000 people are believed to be missing or have gone violently into public hands since 2011.
This included the Sednaya military prison, a notable facility, a particularly inhumane and humiliating place for artillery. Video circulating online showed ten people spilling into the streets around the facility, running into the night.
Syrian refugee human rights defender Ranim Badenjki of the Syria Campaign said he was crying tears of joy at the news of Assad’s departure because it was “too good to be true”.
“We always thought that Assad would be happy, supported by strong allies, and world leaders would join hands with him. But I am glad that the Syrians themselves have made this dream come true,” he said.
“I think that everyone we have lost in these years was killed by protesting or writing a post on social media. I think that people were tortured and killed because they provided medicine or help to those in need. I think of my own who was tortured by Hafez Al-Assad,” he said.
Badenjki said his joy was also tinged with sadness, fearing the fate of some people missing or losing power in Syria’s labyrinthine detention facilities.
“I want to be happy – but I also want to see my friend’s father alive, he disappeared by force 11 years ago from the regime.” I want to know that he is still alive and that he can be released. I want to know the fate of my missing cousin. “
Moayad Hokan, a Syrian analyst living in exile, said the events of the past day were “unbelievable”.
“Over a few months ago, we were all working to make sure that today was never going to happen,” he said. “Every time I hear the words that the Assad regime has fallen, I still can’t really believe it.”