Damascus | Crowds gathered in Syria's Damascus on Sunday to celebrate the fall of Bashar Assad's government with chants, prayers and the occasional gunfire after opposition fighters entered the capital following a stunning advance.
Rami Abdurrahman of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Syrian opposition war monitor, said Assad took a flight from Damascus and left early Sunday. There was no immediate official statement from the Syrian government and Assad's whereabouts remain unknown.
It was the first time opposition forces had reached Damascus since 2018 when Syrian troops recaptured areas on the outskirts of the capital following a yearslong siege.
The night before, opposition forces had taken the central city of Homs, Syria's third largest, as government forces abandoned it.
The rapidly developing events have shaken the region. Lebanon said it was closing all its land border crossings with Syria except for one that links Beirut with Damascus. Jordan closed a border crossing with Syria, too.
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American military presence will continue in eastern Syria
MANAMA | Daniel B Shapiro, a deputy assistant secretary of defense for the Middle East, said the US presence was “solely to ensure the enduring defeat of ISIS and has nothing to do with other aspects of this conflict,” he said, using an acronym for the Islamic State group.
“We call on all parties in Syria to protect civilians, particularly those from Syria's minority communities to respect international military norms and to work to achieve a resolution to include the political settlement,” Shapiro said.
“Multiple actors in this conflict have a terrible track record to include Assad's horrific crimes, Russia's indiscriminate aerial bomb bombardment, Iranian-back militia involvement and the atrocities of ISIS.”
Shapiro, however, was careful not to directly say Assad had been deposed by the insurgents.
“If confirmed no one should shed any tears over the Assad regime,” he added.
Syrians celebrate in the heart of Damascus and storm presidential palace
DAMASCUS | Brimming with excitement, people flocked to Ummayed Square in the heart of the Syrian capital to mark the fall of Bashar Assad's government.
The square houses the building of the Ministry of Defence.
Men on the streets and some riding in the back of pickup trucks fired celebratory shots, as plumes of smoke could be seen in the distance. Some waved the green flag that represented Syria's uprising against the Assad dynasty, the first such instance in well over a decade before the mass protests spiralled into civil war.
A few km away, Syrians stormed the presidential palace, taking down portraits of Assad from the palace's guest quarters where the fallen president hosted heads of state.
Yemeni government minister hails Assad's fall as a blow to Iran
CAIRO | Moammar al-Eryani, Information Minister of Yemen's internationally recognised government, said Iran's “expansionist project, which used sectarian militias as tools to complete the Persian Crescent, sow chaos, undermine the sovereignty of states ... is collapsing" as rebel groups took over the Syrian capital, Damascus.
He also expressed hope that Yemenis would drive out the Iran-backed Houthi rebels, who seized the capital, Sanaa, and much of the country's north in 2014.
“The Yemenis, with their wisdom and steadfastness, are able to thwart the plans of Iran and its Houthi tool to violate their land and tamper with their destiny, just as those plans failed in Syria and Lebanon,” he wrote social media platform X. SCY
