Syrians were seen celebrating throughout the city of Damascus on Saturday as news spread that President Bashar al-Assad had fled the country.
Rebel forces had captured Damascus on Saturday as the culmination of a rapid-fire campaign that wrested control from Assad throughout the country. Various groups have been fighting the Assad regime in a protracted civil war for more than a decade.
The Assad family ruled Syria for more than 50 years. Hafez al-Assad took control of the country in 1971 after staging a coup within his Arab Socialist Ba'ath Party. Bashar al-Assad took the reins upon his father's death in 2000. His whereabouts are unknown, but Russia is a likely candidate. The Assad regime had strong ties with the country, and it was the Russian foreign ministry that announced that Bashar al-Assad had fled.
Videos from Damascus on social media appear to show Syrian military members putting up minimal resistance and discarding their uniforms as rebel forces approached the city. The rebels interrupted a state TV broadcast to declare “victory for the great Syrian revolution and the overthrow of the criminal Assad regime,” according to CNN.
The rebel forces were led by the Islamist group Hayʼat Tahrir al-Sham. While HTS is a Sunni movement, a commander in the rebel forces shared that other religious groups would be safe in Syria.
“We address all the sects of Syria: Syria is for everyone, without exception… Syria is for the Sunni, the Druze, the Alawite. We don’t deal with people like the Assad (regime) did,” he said on a state TV broadcast, per CNN.
Widely shared videos from Damascus showed the celebration of residents as well as the looting of al-Assad's residence.
Live:People are literally looting the presidential Residence. pic.twitter.com/F0jbzIEkFI
— Danny Makki (@danny_makki) December 8, 2024
President-elect Donald Trump reacted to the news on his Truth Social platform, using the news as a platform for his ongoing push to end the war in Ukraine.
"Assad is gone. He has fled his country. His protector, Russia, Russia, Russia, led by Vladimir Putin, was not interested in protecting him any longer... They lost all interest in Syria because of Ukraine, where close to 600,000 Russian soldiers lay wounded or dead, in a war that should never have started, and could go on forever," he wrote. "Too many lives are being so needlessly wasted, too many families destroyed, and if it keeps going, it can turn into something much bigger, and far worse."
