Rebels led by radical Islamists announced that they entered the capital Damascus on Sunday after a dazzling offensive in Syria, which they say drove away President Bashar al-Assad and ended five decades of rule by the Baath party.
Residents of Damascus told AFP they had heard heavy gunfire. “The tyrant Bashar al-Assad has fled” and “we proclaim the city of Damascus free,” rebel groups announced in messages shared on the Telegram application.
“Assad left Syria via Damascus international airport before members of the armed and security forces left” the site, said the director of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (OSDH).
AFP was not immediately able to confirm from an official source the whereabouts of the president who ruled Syria with an iron fist for twenty-four years, bloodily suppressing a rebellion in 2011 that t was transformed into a civil war, one of the most violent of the 21st century.
Quick conquest
Since the start of their offensive on November 27 in northwestern Syria, the rebels have quickly conquered several major key cities, announcing that they are targeting Damascus and want to overthrow the Syrian president.
>> Read also: In Syria, a dazzling rebel offensive driven by years of preparation
They launched an appeal “to return to Syria free” to Syrians displaced abroad by the conflict triggered in 2011 with the violent repression of pro-democracy demonstrations, which left half a million dead, and divided the country into zones. of influence, with belligerents supported by different foreign powers.
In a video posted on his Facebook account, Syrian Prime Minister Mohamed al-Jalali said he was ready to cooperate with any new “leadership” chosen by the people, specifying that he would be in his offices at government headquarters on Sunday morning to any “transfer” of power procedure.
End of a “dark era”
“After fifty years of oppression under the ruling Baath (party), and 13 years of crime, tyranny and displacement, (since the start of the uprising in 2011, editor’s note) today we announce the end of this dark era and the beginning of a new era for Syria,” the rebels added.
“Our forces have started to enter Damascus,” the radical Islamist group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), at the head of a coalition of rebels supported by Turkey, had declared shortly before.
The head of HTS called on his fighters not to approach public institutions, adding that they remained under the control of the Prime Minister until the “official handover”
Airport Pickup
According to OSDH sources, the order was given to officers and soldiers of government forces to withdraw from Damascus international airport.
Before this withdrawal, President Bashar al-Assad was able to leave Syria via Damascus airport, according to the NGO based in London and which has a vast network of sources in Syria.
The rebels immediately announced that they had captured the Sednaya prison in Damascus, a symbol of the worst abuses by President Assad’s forces, and freed the detainees from this establishment.
Lebanese Hezbollah, a key supporter of Bashar al-Assad’s power, has simultaneously withdrawn its forces from the outskirts of Damascus and the Homs region (western Syria), according to the OSDH.
The Lebanese Islamist movement “has asked its fighters in recent hours to withdraw from the Homs region, some heading towards Latakia (west coast of Syria, editor’s note) and others towards the Hermel region in Lebanon”, indicated the NGO, specifying that “Hezbollah fighters had also left their positions around Damascus”.
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