Syrian President Bashar Assad, known for using chemical weapons against his own people, has reportedly left Syria following a rebel takeover of Damascus, as reported by Reuters.
Assad, a former eye doctor trained in the UK who took over from his father, and his wife Asma al-Assad, a British citizen, have fled Syria with their three children, according to Syrian TV reports. Their destination remains unknown.
A video statement from a group of men on Syrian state TV said that Assad had been overthrown and all prisoners have been set free.
The spokesperson for the Operations Room to Conquer Damascus urged opposition fighters and civilians to protect the institutions of the “free Syrian state.”
“Long live the free Syrian state that is to all Syrians and all” their sects and ethnic groups, they said.
Syrian Prime Minister Mohammad Ghazi al-Jalali said early Sunday he didn’t know the whereabouts of Assad. He told the Saudi television network Al-Arabiyya that they lost communication Saturday night.
Crowds of Syrians gathered in the central squares of Damascus to celebrate. Some chanted anti-Assad slogans and honked horns. In other areas, celebratory gunshots rang out.
Syria has been embroiled in a bloody, nearly 14-year civil war as Islamist rebels looked to overthrow the Assad dynasty. The apparent collapse of more than 50 years of Assad family rule over the Syrian Arabian Republic is a monumental turning point in Middle East power politics.
The Wall Street Journal reported on Friday that Egyptian and Jordanian officials urged Assad to flee Syria and form a government-in-exile. Jordan’s government denied the report.
In 2015, Assad’s regime was teetering when Russia intervened to save the dictatorship. The U.S.-sanctioned Lebanese terrorist movement, Hezbollah, and its main sponsor, Iran, both threw their weight behind Assad’s regime.
The rebel forces who routed Assad’s forces—with the swift capture of the major Syrian cities of Aleppo, Hamas, and Homs—jolted both Putin and Iran. Ukraine’s resistance to Russia’s invasion of its territory has weakened Moscow. Israel has inflicted a number of aerial attacks on Iran’s military infrastructure since Tehran’s ally, Hamas, launched a surprise attack against the Jewish state on October 7, 2023.
Portraits of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, left, and his late father and predecessor, Hafez, hang on the wall of a destroyed apartment in the southern Lebanese town of Bint Jbeil, in 2006. (Patrick Baz/AFP via Getty Images)
The United Nations Security Council passed Resolution 2254 in 2015, which called for a cease-fire, UN-run elections and a new constitution. Assad rejected the resolution’s implementation.
After Assad launched a shocking mass chemical weapons strike on Syrian civilians in 2013, in which more than 1,400 people were killed, former President Obama’s administration reneged on its promise to take military action against Assad.
The origin of Assad’s forced departure can be traced back to a group of schoolboys in the southwestern dusty city of Daraa—the cradle of the Syrian revolt—in 2011. The young boys used cans of graffiti to write on a concrete wall: “The people / want / to topple the regime!”
Russian President Vladimir Putin, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and Iran’s Ayatollah Ali Khamenei (Fox News/Getty Images)
Assad’s cousin, Gen. Atef Najeeb, oversaw an operation that involved reported torture of the arrested 15 boys between the ages of 10 and 15. Syrian officials ripped the boy’s fingernails out and burned and beat them.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
