Syrian rebels said they had entered Damascus on Sunday as President Bashar al-Assad’s regime appeared to collapse in the face of the insurgents’ stunning offensive across the country.
The rebels said in a statement that “the city of Damascus is free from the tyrant Bashar al-Assad” and that “Assad has fled” after various factions encircled the capital from the north and the south.
The whereabouts of Assad were unclear, with reports that he had fled, which would bring an ignominious end to a family dynasty that has ruled Syria for more than 50 years.
Residents said there was celebratory shooting in the air, with clouds of smoke hanging across the capital.
“I can’t believe it. Everyone is in the street, everyone is shouting,” said Abdallah, a Damascus resident. “It’s something historical. No one has suffered as much as the Syrian people.”
He added that rebel militants were posted outside banks and other public institutions to guard them.
The downfall of the Assad regime would usher in a period of huge uncertainty for Syria, a nation shattered and fragmented after 13 years of civil war, and for the wider region. The country shares borders with Israel, Jordan, Iraq and Lebanon. Rebel groups have clashed with each other in the past.
The White House said President Joe Biden was “closely monitoring the extraordinary events in Syria and staying in constant touch with regional partners”.
The rebel offensive has been led by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, an Islamist movement that was confined to Syria’s north-west province of Idlib before beginning its offensive 12 days ago. The group, which was once an affiliate of al-Qaeda, rocked the country by seizing Aleppo, Syria’s second city, within 48 hours and then marching southwards towards the capital.
It has been working with Turkish-backed rebels who operate under the umbrella of the Syrian National Army, but Syria is home to myriad factions and the degree of co-ordination between them all is unclear.
There was no official statement by the Syrian presidency, the military or state media about the Assad or the situation in the country. Al-Ekhbaria, a state-run TV channel, was broadcasting pre-recorded footage of Syrian architecture set to light guitar music.
Assad, a London-trained eye doctor, has ruled Syria since 2000, when he succeeded his late father Hafez al-Assad. The civil war broke out in 2011 after his forces brutally sought to put down a popular uprising.
He managed to cling to power with the backing of Iran, Iranian-backed militants and Russia, which provided vital air power. His regime had regained control over most of the country in recent years.
But he presided over a hollowed-out, bankrupt state, and even many among his own Alawite community appeared to have given up on the regime after years of conflict and economic hardship.
When HTS mounted its offensive on November 27, regime forces seemed to melt away, while Russia, Iran and Hizbollah, the Lebanese militant movement, were all weakened and distracted by their own conflicts.
Rebels said they had gained full control of the strategic city of Homs, the last major city on the highway south to Damascus, in the early hours of Sunday.
Southern rebels, separate from HTS, took over Deraa, the birthplace of the Syrian uprising in 2011, as well as the cities of Suwaida and Quneitra, over the weekend, encircling Damascus from the south.
The rebel success is a humiliating blow to Iran, which reportedly pulled people out of Syria, and to Russia. Moscow gained access to air and naval bases on the Mediterranean after intervening in the war in 2015.
Russia’s foreign minister Sergei Lavrov had said on Saturday that Moscow would stand by its ally and was “trying to do everything not to allow terrorists to prevail, even if they say they are no longer terrorists”.
Meanwhile, Tehran’s support for Assad had given it a “land bridge” across Iraq to Syria and Lebanon, home to its most important proxy, Hizbollah.
HTS is designated a terrorist organisation by the US, the UN, Turkey and other powers, while its leader Abu Mohammad al-Jolani has a $10mn American bounty on his head.
In recent years, Jolani has sought to rebrand the group as a more moderate Islamist movement, building up an autocratic, centralised movement with a tight grip on Idlib, which is home to 3-4mn people.
The rebels said they had freed prisoners from the notorious Sadnaya prison, which had become a symbol of the Assad regime’s brutal repression of its political opponents.
On Saturday, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, who has long backed some Syrian opposition forces, hailed “a new diplomatic and political reality in Syria”.
