Islamist-led rebels in Syria have declared a take-over of Damascus, the country’s capital after reports alleged that President Hassan al-Assad had fled the capital.
There were reports of residents of the city cheering and clapping as the rebels rode into town after torpedoing the country’s military, bringing to an end one of the longest-reigning Presidents in the Middle East.
The rebels said al-Assad fled Damascus during the weekend, even though the Syrian presidential office and Iranian officials maintained that he was still in the capital.
Assad is backed by the Iranian and Russian leaders in its long-running battle with the rebels, but his fall was quickened by the Hezbollah-Israeli war, which saw many Hezbollah fighters and supporters of Assad decimated.
The rebels capitalising on weakened Hezbollah stopped Aleppo and other Syrian towns and blitzed through before hitting Damascus.
A CNN report claimed that a US official revealed that the Assad regime had fallen, adding that the rebels say they are in touch with senior Assad regime officers who were considering defecting.
AFP News also reported that rebel factions heralded the departure of Assad, saying the “tyrant Assad had departed, and “We declare the city of Damascus free.”
Syrian rebels took to the airwaves on state Syrian TV on Sunday morning local time to announce they had ousted President Bashar al-Assad, after their shock seizure of the country’s capital of Damascus.
Footage circulating on social media channels shows the rebels taking control of the state TV building and entering the control gallery to ready the broadcast.
TV Broadcast: Assad Toppled
A group of nine men in casual clothes made an on-air statement saying they had toppled the “oppressive” al-Assad, and also freed prisoners being held in his regime’s notorious Sednaya prison on the outskirts of Damascus.
Assad is reported to have flown out of the country to an unknown destination in the early hours of Sunday. The president’s flight ended his family’s 54-year stranglehold on the country which began when his father Hafez al-Assad seized power in a bloodless coup in November 1970.
The rebels’ ousting of Assad is the latest chapter in a bloody civil conflict, which began in 2011 with peaceful pro-democracy protests in the wake of the Arab Spring in Tunisia and Egypt but descended into deadly fighting between rebels and the army, which remained loyal to the president.
According to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, just over 500,000 people had been killed in the conflict, split between some 343,000 military personnel and 164,00 civilians.
More than 14 million Syrians were forced to flee their homes, with 7.2 million people displaced internally and another 5.5 million heading to neighbouring countries of Turkey, Lebanon, Jordan, Iraq and Egypt. Refugees also headed to Europe, with Germany currently home to more than 850,000 people who fled Syria.
Countless members of the country’s film and TV community were among those forced to flee for their safety when they found themselves on the wrong side of Assad.
