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The Syrian government appeared to have fallen early Sunday as rebel troops declared the capital Damascus “free” after entering the city to scant resistance from forces of the Russia-backed regime of dictator Bashar Assad.
The rebels claimed that Assad had fled the capital, losing his decades-long grip on power, after a lightning-fast offensive by opposition forces in recent days.
“We declare the city of Damascus free from the tyrant Bashar al-Assad,” the Military Operations Command said in a post on Telegram on Sunday.
“To the displaced all over the world, a free Syria awaits you,” the statement added.
Syria’s army command notified officers on Sunday that Assad’s regime had ended, Reuters reported. The Syrian army later said it was continuing operations against “terrorist groups” in the towns of Hama and Homs and Deraa countryside, according to the report.
Syrian state television aired a video statement by a group of men saying that Assad has been overthrown and all detainees in jails have been set free, the Associated Press reported. The man who read the statement said the Operations Room to Conquer Damascus, an opposition group, called on all opposition fighters and citizens to preserve state institutions of “the free Syrian state,” according to the report.
The head of a Syrian opposition war monitor had said earlier that Assad had left the country for an undisclosed location, fleeing ahead of insurgents who said they had entered Damascus following the remarkably swift advance across the country, according to media reports.
Syrian rebels encircled Damascus on Saturday after a lightning offensive that saw the opposition forces take control of key cities in the country.
On Friday, the Syrian army confirmed it had lost control of the strategic city of Hama to the rebels, an al Qaeda breakaway called Tahrir al-Sham. The rebels seized Syria’s largest city of Aleppo late last month in an effective offensive, forcing government forces to withdraw.
Statues of Assad’s father and brother were toppled in now rebel-held cities, as well as in Damascus suburbs.
Assad had been in power for 25 years and his family ruled Syria for more than half a century. His Iran- and Russia-allied regime brutally curtailed human rights, deploying chemical weapons against civilians as part of the civil war that has raged in the country since 2011.
The fast-moving rebel insurgency put two of Russia’s strategic military assets — an airbase in the Latakia province and a naval facility in Tartus on the Mediterranean near the Lebanese border — under serious threat, Reuters reported on Saturday. Satellite imagery showed ships have been leaving the Tartus naval base for several days.
The Russian Embassy in Damascus advised Russian citizens to leave Syria “in the light of the difficult military and political situation.”
The foreign ministers of Russia, Turkey and Iran reportedly met in Doha and agreed on the necessity to put an immediate end to “hostilities” in Syria, according to Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov.
U.S. President-elect Donald Trump said Russians getting pushed out of Syria was “the best thing that can happen to them” in a post on his Truth Social platform.
This story is being updated.
