A crowd gathered in Damascus on Sunday to celebrate with chants, prayers and occasional gunfire after the stunning advance of opposition forces The Assad family’s fifty years of iron rule are coming to an end but raised questions about the future of the country and the wider region.
President Bashar Assad and other officials left Syria, their whereabouts unknown, after resigning and holding negotiations with rebel groups, the Russian Foreign Ministry claimed on Sunday.
Omar Sanadiki / AP
In a post on messaging app Telegram on Sunday, the ministry said Assad left Syria after negotiations with opposition fighters and gave “instructions” to “transfer power peacefully.”
“Russia did not participate in these negotiations,” the ministry said, adding that it had been following “with extreme concern” the “dramatic events” in Syria.
The White House told CBS News it was not aware of Assad’s whereabouts.
It was the first time forces of the opposition had reached Damascus since 2018, when Syrian forces retook areas on the outskirts of the capital after a years-long siege.
Hussein Malla / AP
Videos from Damascus showed families walking into the presidential palace, some emerging with piles of dishes and other household items.
“I didn’t sleep last night and I refused to sleep until I heard the news of his fall,” said Mohammed Amer Al-Oulabi, 44, who works in the electricity sector. “From Idlib to Damascus it only took them (the opposition forces) a few days, thank God. May God bless them, the heroic lions who made us proud.”
Ghaith Alsayed / AP
The rapidly developing events have shocked the region. Lebanon said it is closing its land border crossings with Syria, except for the crossing linking Beirut with Damascus. Jordan also closed a border crossing with Syria.
Abu Mohammed al-Golani, a former al-Qaeda commander who cut ties with the group years ago and says he embraces pluralism and religious tolerance, leads the largest rebel faction and is poised to chart the country’s future direction to take.
Hussein Malla / AP
The rebels now face the daunting task of bridging bitter divisions in a country ravaged by war and still divided among several armed factions. Turkish-backed opposition fighters are battling US-allied Kurdish forces in the north, and Islamic State is still active in some remote areas.
Syrian state television early Sunday broadcast a video statement from a group of rebels saying that Assad had been overthrown and that all prisoners had been released. The man who read the statement called on rebel fighters and civilians to preserve the institutions of “the free Syrian state.”
Reaction from all over the world
Iran, which had strongly backed Assad’s ousted government, says Syrians must decide their country’s future “without destructive, coercive foreign intervention.”
Sunday’s State Department statement was the country’s first official response to the overthrow of Assad’s government by rebels.
The UN special envoy for Syria, Geir Pedersen, called for urgent talks in Geneva on Saturday to ensure an “orderly political transition”.
The Gulf state of Qatar, a key regional mediator, hosted an emergency meeting late Saturday of foreign ministers and top officials from eight countries with interests in Syria. Participants included Iran, Saudi Arabia, Russia and Turkey.
“President Biden and his team are closely monitoring the extraordinary events in Syria and are in constant contact with regional partners,” White House National Security Council spokesperson Sean Savett wrote on social media.
Saudi Press Agency via AP
The French Foreign Ministry said France “welcomes” the fall of Assad’s government after more than 13 years of violent repression against its own people.
The ministry said in a statement: “The Syrian people have suffered too much. Bashar Assad has bled the country dry, stripped of much of its population who, if not forced into exile, have been slaughtered, tortured and bombed with chemical weapons by the regime and its allies.”
German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock expressed understanding for the relief felt by the Syrian people after the fall of Assad’s government, but warned that “the country must not now fall into the hands of other radicals.”
“Several hundreds of thousands of Syrians have been killed in the civil war, millions have fled,” Baerbock said in a statement emailed from her office on Sunday. “Assad murdered, tortured and used poison gas against his own people. He must finally be held accountable for this.”
The war in Syria began in 2011 when a pro-democracy uprising calling for the end of Assad’s long rule quickly escalated into a brutal civil war. Since then, the conflict has killed more than 500,000 people and driven some 12 million from their homes.
