Syria updates: Rebels enter Damascus, claim Assad has fled – DW – 12/08/2024

Syria’s rebel factions took to Telegram to announce a “new era” for Syria on Sunday amid reports that President Assad has left the country. 

“The tyrant Bashar Assad has fled” and “we declare the city of Damascus free,” the rebels said. 

“After 50 years of oppression under Baath rule, and 13 years of crimes and tyranny and (forced) displacement… we announce today the end of this dark period and the start of a new era for Syria,” they added. 

The rebels also urged citizens abroad to return to a “free Syria.”

Syrian rebel head Abu Mohammed al-Golani said on Sunday that public institutions would remain under the supervision of Prime Minister Mohammed Ghazi Jalali — whom he referred to as “former prime minister”— until an official handover. 

The rebel leader, who also uses the nom de guerre Ahmed al-Sharaa, announced that it was prohibited to go near public institutions.

Meanwhile, Jalali said he remained in his home and was ready to support continuity of governance.

Syrian Prime Minister Mohammed Ghazi Jalali on Sunday said that he was ready for any handover process and was ready to “cooperate” with any leadership chosen by the people of Syria as rebel forces entered capital Damascus in a lightning offensive. 

“This country can be a normal country that builds good relations with its neighbors and the world… but this issue is up to any leadership chosen by the Syrian people,” Jalali said in an address on Facebook.

“We are ready to cooperate with it (that leadership) and offer all possible facilities.”

The prime minister also called for the preservation of state institutions that “are for everyone.”

Jalali was a former communications minister who was appointed as prime minister by President Bashar Assad in September.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said on Sunday that President Bashar Assad has left Syria. 

News agency AFP quoted the war monitor’s chief Rami Abdel Rahman as saying: “Assad left Syria via Damascus international airport before the army security forces left” the facility. 

Earlier, two unnamed senior army officers told news agency Reuters that Assad had boarded a plane and departed for an unknown destination.

There has been no statement from the Syrian government regarding Assad’s whereabouts. 

Damascus International Airport has been evacuated and all flights have been halted, according to the pro-government radio station Sham FM.

Meanwhile, sources from the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights told AFP that Syrian military and security forces have withdrawn from the airport.

Syria’s Islamist-led rebels claimed on Sunday that they had broken into the Saydnaya military prison outside Damascus and opened its gates for prisoners. 

The rebels announced an “end of the era of tyranny in the prison of Sednaya” on Telegram.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said that “the doors of the infamous ‘Saydnaya’ prison, known as the ‘human slaughterhouse’, have been opened for thousands of detainees who were imprisoned by the security apparatus throughout the regime’s rule”.

Syrian rebel groups said they entered the capital, Damascus, in the early hours of Sunday morning.

“Our forces started entering Damascus,” the Islamist group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) said on Telegram.

The head of the UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, Rami Abdel-Rahman, confirmed the reports to Germany’s DPA news agency.

It comes hours after rebels claimed to have captured Syria’s third-largest city, Homs, to the north.

Residents in Damascus said they could hear gunfire, news agencies AFP and Reuters reported.

Sources from the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights also told AFP that government forces had withdrawn from Damascus International Airport on the outskirts of the city.

Forces of the Islamist group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) entered the suburbs of Syria’s third city of Homs overnight while President Bashar Assad’s forces have largely pulled back from the city.

“The process of advancing and combing the city’s neighborhoods is currently under way, ” Ahmed al-Sharaa, the leader of HTS, said in a video on Telegram.

“We are currently living the final moments of liberating Homs,” al-Sharaa added.

Pro-government radio station Sham FM said government forces had taken up positions outside the city, without providing any more details.

News agency Reuters cited a Syrian army officer, who it did not name, as saying that units of Lebanese group Hezbollah’s elite Radwan forces had left the city of Homs. 

Meanwhile, HTS commander Hassan Abdul-Ghani claimed his forces had freed more than 3,500 prisoners in the city on Saturday. . 

“Our forces … have succeeded in freeing more than 3,500 prisoners from the prison … in Homs,” he said. 

He said his forces had already begun the “final stage” of their advance by moving to surround Damascus.

dvv/zc (Reuters, AFP, AP, dpa)