{"id":118111,"date":"2024-12-09T00:00:55","date_gmt":"2024-12-09T00:00:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/bashar-al-assad-reported-to-have-fled-syria-as-rebels-say-they-have-captured-damascus-the-guardian\/"},"modified":"2024-12-09T00:00:55","modified_gmt":"2024-12-09T00:00:55","slug":"bashar-al-assad-reported-to-have-fled-syria-as-rebels-say-they-have-captured-damascus-the-guardian","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/bashar-al-assad-reported-to-have-fled-syria-as-rebels-say-they-have-captured-damascus-the-guardian\/","title":{"rendered":"Bashar al-Assad reported to have fled Syria as rebels say they have captured Damascus – The Guardian"},"content":{"rendered":"

Celebrations on streets of Syrian cities as as Assad regime appears to have fallen
The Syrian president, Bashar al-Assad, is believed to have fled the country his family has ruled over for 50 years as rebels said they had captured the capital<\/a> after a lightning advance completed in just under two weeks.
Two senior Syrian officers told Reuters that Assad had fled Damascus, his destination unknown. The report could not be independently verified.
The senior Emirati diplomat Anwar Gargash declined to say whether Assad was fleeing to the United Arab Emirates.
\u201cWhen people ask where is Bashar al-Assad<\/a> going to, I say, you know, when you really look at this, this is really at the end of the day a footnote in history,\u201d he told reporters at a conference in Bahrain.
The Syrian leader had been publicly absent as Islamist militant insurgents spearheaded a sweeping offensive that began in a small enclave in north-western Syria, and within 11 days appeared to have toppled Assad\u2019s rule.
In their first announcement on state television following the offensive that took the world by surprise, rebels said they had ended Assad\u2019s 24-year authoritarian rule.
A group of people were shown at the state television news studio, with one reading a statement from the \u201cDamascus conquest operations room\u201d announcing \u201cthe liberation of the city of Damascus and the fall of the tyrant Bashar al-Assad and the release of all the unjustly detained from the regime prisons\u201d, calling on fighters and citizens to safeguard the \u201cproperty of the free Syrian state\u201d.
Syria\u2019s army command notified officers on Sunday that Assad\u2019s regime had ended, a Syrian officer who was informed of the move told Reuters. But the Syrian army later said it was continuing operations against \u201cterrorist groups\u201d in the towns of Hama and Homs and Deraa countryside.
Rebels said they had freed prisoners from Damascus\u2019s notorious Sednaya prison, regarded as a symbol of the Assad regime\u2019s brutality, while video from Damascus showed a man climbing on top of a hospital sign to tear down a poster of Assad\u2019s face. In the capital\u2019s central square, people climbed on top of tanks and cheered as they trampled on a toppled statue of Assad\u2019s father, Hafez, AFPTV images showed.
In Syria\u2019s second city of Aleppo, claimed by insurgent forces just one week before, celebratory singing broadcast from the speakers of mosques was interspersed with the sound of ululating and cheering ringing out across the rooftops.
The Assad family have 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 through a vast security state, crushing dissent through a broad network of detention centres and government surveillance.
Bashar al-Assad suppressed a popular uprising against him in 2011, when Syrians first took to the streets of major cities to demand his overthrow. What began as peaceful demonstrations later spilled over into a civil war that is estimated to have killed<\/a> more than 300,000 people in 10 years of fighting.
Assad willingly turned the full might of the state on his own people in order to maintain control, including pummelling the civilian population with airstrikes and using chemical weapons including the deadly nerve agent sarin.
\u201cToday is the end of 54 years of the reign of Assad family in Syria. This is the only regime I knew all of my life,\u201d said doctor Zaher Sahloul, a Syrian-American physician who organised medical missions into Syria, including hospitals in Aleppo that were targeted by Syrian and Russian airstrikes.
\u201cI don\u2019t cry often in my adult life but today I did. It has been 14 long years of horror. This is our Berlin Wall moment,\u201d he said.
Intervention from Russia and Iran had allowed Assad to survive almost 14 years of unrest and civil strife, leaving him in charge of a fractured state. His rule over Syria had appeared inevitable, until an insurgent advance led by the group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham<\/a> began to seize control of major towns along a highway leading to Damascus.
As the insurgency drew closer along the highway that leads to the capital, rebel groups across southern Syria took control of a swath of towns south of Damascus. Armed opposition groups closed in on the capital from three directions as Syrian army officers retreated, or fled. Video from Damascus showed soldiers rapidly changing into civilian clothes on the streets of the capital before dispersing.
The prime minister, Mohammed Ghazi Jalali, said in a video statement that the government was ready to \u201cextend its hand\u201d to the opposition, offering to work with a transitional government.
\u201cI am in my house and I have not left, and this is because of my belonging to this country,\u201d Jalili said, without addressing Assad\u2019s whereabouts.
Promising a \u201cnew Syria\u201d in their own statement, the insurgents said: \u201cWe turn the page on the dark past, and open a new horizon for the future.\u201d
As armed rebels swept cities across the country, they flung open detention facilities where rights groups estimated that at least 100,000 people were considered missing or forcibly disappeared since 2011 at the hands of the state.
This included the Sednaya military prison, a facility notorious as the site of particularly brutal and humiliating methods of torture. Video circulating online showed tens of people streaming into the streets around the facility, running into the night.
The exiled Syrian human rights defender Ranim Badenjki of the Syria Campaign said she was crying tears of joy at the news of Assad\u2019s departure, as \u201cit\u2019s all too good to be true\u201d.
\u201cWe always thought that Assad was lucky, supported by strong allies, and world leaders rushing to shake hands with him. But I\u2019m happy to see that Syrians themselves made this dream come true,\u201d she said.
\u201cI am thinking of everyone we lost in recent years, killed for protesting or writing a post on social media. I think of the people tortured to death because they provided medicine or help to people in need. I think of my grandpa who was tortured by Hafez al-Assad,\u201d she said.
Badenjki said her joy was also tinged with sorrow, fearful to learn the fate of some of the people missing or potentially lost in Syria\u2019s labyrinthine detention facilities.
\u201cI want to be happy \u2013 but I also want to see my friend\u2019s father alive. He was forcibly disappeared by the regime 11 years ago. I want to know he is still alive and that he can be released. I want to know the fate of my missing cousin.\u201d
Moayad Hokan, a Syrian analyst living in exile, said the events of the past day were \u201cunbelievable.\u201d
\u201cJust a few months ago all of us were operating under the assumption that this day would never come,\u201d he said. \u201cEvery time I say to myself the words the Assad regime has fallen, I still can\u2019t really believe it.\u201d<\/p>\n

source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Celebrations on streets of Syrian cities as as Assad regime appears to have fallenThe Syrian president, Bashar al-Assad, is believed to have fled the country his family has ruled over for 50 years as rebels said they had captured the capital after a lightning advance completed in just under two weeks.Two senior Syrian officers told […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":118112,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-118111","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world","8":"entry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/118111","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=118111"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/118111\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/118112"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=118111"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=118111"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=118111"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}