Summary
Here’s a wrap-up of the day’s key events:
Thousands of Syrians have taken to the streets in celebration following the ouster of Bashar al-Assad. On Friday, Agence-France Presse reported that families with children, as well as armed and uniformed Islamist fighters gathered in celebration of the first Friday prayers in Damascus following Assad’s overthrow.
During US secretary of state Antony Blinken’s trip to Iraq, the US’s top diplomat warned against the resurgence of ISIS, also known by the Arabic acronym Daesh. “We are determined to make sure that Daesh cannot re-emerge,” Blinken said.
The European Union is seeking establish diplomatic contact “soon” with with Syria’s new leadership, which is headed by the Islamist group Hayat Tahiri al-Sham (HTS), Agence France-Presse reports. Speaking to the AFP, a high-ranking European Union official said, “What we are now thinking is to establish contacts, to pass messages about our expectations.” The official added that the outreach would be at “working level.”
The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) has launched two new telephone hotlines in hopes of helping Syrians reunite with loved ones who have been missing for years. Since Syria’s civil war began more than 13 years ago, the ICRC said it has received around 35,000 reports of missing people.
Syria’s new interim authorities have asked the United Nations refugee agency to remain in the country and indicated a willingness to protect them, UNHCR said Friday. “The needs are absolutely huge,” Gonzalo Vargas Llosa, UNHCR’s representative in Syria, told reporters. The agency had had “some contact with the interim authorities”, he said, adding: “the initial signals that they are sending us are constructive”.
The European Commission said it would launch an “air bridge” operation aimed at delivering an initial 50 tonnes of health supplies to Syria via neighbouring Turkey in the coming days. A further 46 tonnes of relief supplies will be trucked from a stockpile in Denmark for distribution in Syria by Unicef and the World Health Organization.
Russia has also reportedly established direct contact with the political committee of Syria’s Islamist rebel group, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, according to the Interfax news agency, which quoted Russia’s deputy foreign minister, Mikhail Bogdanov. In comments to reporters, Bogdanov reportedly said Moscow aims to maintain its military bases in Syria.
Here are some images coming through the newswires from Syria where thousands of Syrians are celebrating the first Friday prayer following the ouster of Bashar al-Assad:
Men, women and children gathered at Umayyad Mosque to celebrate the first Friday prayers since the overthrow of the former president Bashar al-Assad, later streaming into the city streets and squares.
The mass gathering was reminiscent of the early days of the 2011 uprising, when pro-democracy protesters took to the streets after Friday prayers in Syrian cities – though never in Damascus, long a stronghold of the Assad clan.
Thousands celebrate Bashar al-Assad's ouster in Syria
Thousands of Syrians have taken to the streets in celebration following the ouster of Bashar al-Assad.
On Friday, Agence-France Presse reported that families with children, as well as armed and uniformed Islamist fighters gathered in celebration of the first Friday prayers in Damascus following Assad’s overthrow.
It added that former rebel fighters allowed women and children to pose with their assault rifles for celebratory photos.
Speaking to Agence France-Presse, 38-year old Nour Thi al-Ghina said: “We are gathering because we’re happy Syria has been freed, we’re happy to have been liberated from the prison in which we lived.”
Meanwhile, 30-year old rebel fither Mohammed Shobek who came to Damascus alongside Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, said: “We’ve finished the war in Syria and started praying for peace, we started carrying flowers, we started building this country and building it hand in hand.”
Throughout Damascus, people chanted: “One, one, one, the Syrian people is one!”
During US secretary of state Antony Blinken’s trip to Iraq, the US’s top diplomat warned against the resurgence of ISIS, also known by the Arabic acronym Daesh.
“We are determined to make sure that Daesh cannot re-emerge,” Blinken said.
“The United States [and] Iraq, together had tremendous success in taking away the territorial caliphate that Daesh had created years ago,” he added.
Blinken went on to say also reaffirm Iraqi sovereignty, saying, “I think this is a moment as well for Iraq to reinforce its own sovereignty as well as its stability, security and success going forward.”
The European Union is seeking establish diplomatic contact “soon” with with Syria’s new leadership, which is headed by the Islamist group Hayat Tahiri al-Sham (HTS), Agence France-Presse reports.
Speaking to the AFP following the ousting of Syrian president Bashar al-Assad, a high-ranking European Union official said, “What we are now thinking is to establish contacts, to pass messages about our expectations.” The official added that the outreach would be at “working level.”
Syrian rebels have revealed a year-long plot that brought down Bashar al-Assad’s regime.
The Guardian’s William Christou reports from Jableh, Syria:
Syrian rebels began planning the military assault that toppled the Assad regime a year ago, in a highly disciplined operation in which a new drone unit was deployed and where there was close coordination between opposition groups around the country, the top military commander of the main rebel group has revealed.
In his first interview with foreign media since the fall of Assad’s 54-year-rule, Abu Hassan al-Hamwi, the head of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham’s (HTS) military wing, spoke about how his group, which was based in the country’s north-west, communicated with rebels in the south to create a unified war room with the goal of ultimately surrounding Damascus from both directions.
He said that though the planning for the operation to oust al-Assad, dubbed “deterring aggression”, had started a year ago, the group had been preparing for years.
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News agency AFP has spoken to some of those who are out celebrating today in Syria, here’s a selection of what they heard:
Nour Thi al-Ghina, 38 years old, in Damascus:
We are gathering because we’re happy Syria has been freed, we’re happy to have been liberated from the prison in which we lived.
This is the first time we have converged in such big numbers and the first time we are seeing such an event. We never expected this to happen.”
Amani Zanhur, a 42-year-old professor of computer engineering:
“There can be nothing worse than what was. We cannot fear the situation.”
Amina Maarawi, 42:
“Let’s not discuss details that might separate us now and focus only on what brings us together: our hatred for Bashar al-Assad.”
Mohammed al-Saad, 32, a member of HTS who had travelled with colleagues from Idlib province to help set up the new government:
“We’ve been waiting 13 years for this. We’ve come to get work started.”
Ukraine’s agriculture minister, Vitaliy Koval, has told Reuters that Kyiv is willing and ready to supply grain to Syria.
Russian and Syrian sources said earlier that Russian wheat supplies to Syria had been suspended amid payment delays and uncertainty over how relations between Damascus and Moscow would play out following the ousting of the Assad regime.
Ukraine’s exports were buffeted by Russia’s February 2022 invasion, which severely reduced shipments via the Black Sea. Ukraine has since broken a de facto sea blockade and revived exports from its southern ports of Odesa.
US secretary of state makes unannounced visit to Iraq for talks on Syria
Antony Blinken has stopped in Iraq as he seeks to rally support across the Middle East for a peaceful political transition in Syria.
Blinken said he told the Iraqi prime minister, Mohammed Shia al-Sudani, of “our commitment to working with Iraq on security and always working for Iraq’s sovereignty, to make sure that that is strengthened and preserved”.
He added: “I think this is a moment as well for Iraq to reinforce its own sovereignty as well as its stability, security and success going forward.”
The United States maintains about 2,500 troops in Iraq and 900 more in Syria as part of a campaign to prevent the resurgence of the Islamic State.
Iraq’s government has urged respect for the “free will” of all Syrians and the country’s territorial integrity after Assad’s fall.
The deposed Syrian leader hailed from a rival faction of the Baath party of Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, ousted in a 2003 US-led invasion.
Updated
Red Cross opens hotlines to reunite Syrian families
The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) has launched two new telephone hotlines in hopes of helping Syrians reunite with loved ones who have been missing for years.
Since Syria’s civil war began more than 13 years ago, the ICRC said it has received around 35,000 reports of missing people.
Stephan Sakalian, the head of ICRC’s Syria delegation, told reporters that one hotline would cater to prisoners and the other was for those seeking their missing loved ones.
“We can provide them with mental health and psychosocial support ... we can even help them financially if they need to be reunited,” he told a press briefing, according to Reuters.
In recent days, incredible stories have emerged of prisoners, frail and emaciated, being freed and greeted by weeping family members who had no idea they were still alive.
Sakalian, however, sought to temper expectations. “Let’s make no mistake: giving answers to people will take weeks, months and maybe years, given the amount of information to process,” he said. “The work is tremendous.”
Soon after the Assad regime was toppled, some conservative and far-right politicians in Germany were quick to suggest that Syrians could now return home.
But the prospect has left German hospitals and other employers fearful of worker shortages.
A study published Friday by Germany’s Institute for Employment Research has backed this concern, noting that around 287,000 Syrian nationals are employed in Germany.
Large-scale returns “could have noticeable regional and sector-specific effects - especially in those sectors, fields of activity and regions that are already suffering from a shortage of labour,” Yuliya Kosyakova, a researcher with the institute, told AFP.
Health care providers have warned that more than 5,000 Syrian doctors work in German medical facilities, often in rural areas, and that they and other staff would be hard to replace.
With many Syrians also employed as care workers, their departure would be a “serious blow for elderly care”, the director of the Nursing employers’ association, Isabell Halletz, told news channel NTV.
Here are the latest photos from across Syria as people celebrate the fall of the Assad regime:
Thousands of Syrians gather at famed Damascus mosque
Syrians converged on a landmark Damascus mosque for Friday prayers, waving opposition flags and chanting – all scenes that would have been unimaginable during the Assad regime.
At the capital’s famed Umayyad Mosque, men, women and children gathered to celebrate on the first Friday prayers since Assad’s ouster, later streaming into the city streets and squares, AFP reported.
The scenes were reminiscent of the early days of the 2011 uprising, when pro-democracy protesters in Syrian cities would take to the streets after Friday prayers - but never in Damascus, long a stronghold of the Assad clan.
On Friday, exhilarated crowds chanted “One, one, one, the Syrian people are one!”
Some held the Syrian independence flag, used by the opposition since the uprising began, while dozens of street vendors milled around the mosque, seeking to sell the three-star flags.
UN says Syria's new authorities are sending 'constructive' signals
Syria’s new interim authorities have asked the United Nations refugee agency to remain in the country and indicated a willingness to protect them, UNHCR said Friday.
“The needs are absolutely huge,” Gonzalo Vargas Llosa, UNHCR’s representative in Syria, told reporters. The agency had had “some contact with the interim authorities”, he said, adding: “the initial signals that they are sending us are constructive”.
The authorities told us “they want us to stay in Syria, that they appreciate the work that we have been doing now for many years, that they need us to continue doing that work,” said Vargas Llosa.
He said the interim authorities had also indicated “they will provide us the necessary security to carry out those activities”.
Updated
Around 700 political prisoners held in the prison inside the Mezzeh airbase were released earlier this week following the ousting of the Assad regime.
The now-empty cells – cramped, peeling and covered in etchings – stand as a stark testament to the conditions suffered by former inmates. My colleagues have put together this photo essay:
It’s almost 4pm in Damascus. Here’s a quick summary of today’s developments:
The US secretary of state, Anthony Blinken, is wrapping up a visit to Turkey as part of a broader effort to rally support across the Middle East for a peaceful political transition in Syria. The US administration is worried that a power vacuum in Syria could worsen tensions in the region, already heightened by multiple conflicts, and create conditions for the Islamic State group to regain territory and influence.
Blinken said Friday that there’s broad agreement on what both Turkey and the US would like to see in Syria following concerns about the two NATO allies’ competing interests in Syria, as Turkey targets a US-backed Kurdish group seen as key to containing the extremists.
Blinken also said he saw “encouraging signs” of progress toward a ceasefire in Gaza and urged Turkey to use its influence to encourage Hamas to accept. “What we’ve seen in the last couple of weeks are more encouraging signs that (a ceasefire) is possible,” Blinken told reporters. More than 44,875 Palestinians have been killed and 106,454 injured in Israel’s military offensive on Gaza since 7 October 2023, the Gaza health ministry said Friday.
G7 leaders are set to gather virtually on Friday afternoon to discuss Syria. The leaders have said they are prepared to support a transition to an “inclusive and non-sectarian” government, and emphasised “the importance of holding the Assad regime accountable for its crimes.”
The European Commission said it would launch an “air bridge” operation aimed at delivering an initial 50 tonnes of health supplies to Syria via neighbouring Turkey in the coming days. A further 46 tonnes of relief supplies will be trucked from a stockpile in Denmark for distribution in Syria by Unicef and the World Health Organization.
Russia has also reportedly established direct contact with the political committee of Syria’s Islamist rebel group, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, according to the Interfax news agency, which quoted Russia’s deputy foreign minister, Mikhail Bogdanov. In comments to reporters, Bogdanov reportedly said Moscow aims to maintain its military bases in Syria.
Israel’s defence minister, Israel Katz, has ordered the military to “prepare to remain” throughout the winter in the UN-patrolled buffer zone between Israeli and Syrian forces on the strategic Golan Heights. Israel seized the demilitarised zone on Sunday, hours after Syrian rebels ousted Bashar al-Assad.
In the US, a former Syrian military official who oversaw a prison where alleged human rights abuses took place has been charged by a federal grand jury with several counts of torture and conspiracy to commit a crime. Samir Ousman al-Sheikh, who oversaw Syria’s infamous Adra Prison from 2005 to 2008 under recently ousted President Bashar Assad, was arrested in July on visa fraud charges.
Bashar al-Assad was whisked away without a last message to his people, the aircraft’s transponder deliberately switched off to avoid detection as it departed from an airbase in Syria.
The operation was carried out with such secrecy that even the dictator’s brother reportedly was not informed.
A decade earlier, it was Russian military power that saved Bashar al-Assad’s rule by intervening on his side during what appeared to be a losing civil war he violently attempted to suppress. Now, as rebel troops closed in on Damascus, Moscow provided Assad with a personal escape route. More on Assad’s escape here:
The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) in Syria is urgently calling on officials across the country to prevent the destruction of crucial records such as arrest logs, lists of detainees and court and hospital records, citing the tens of thousands of people reported missing during the war.
In a statement Stephan Sakalian, the head of the ICRC in Syria said:
In the past 13 years, the ICRC has registered 35,000 cases of people who have gone missing in Syria.
Behind every such case, there is a family and excruciating pain that only gets worse as years go by … This week, as prisons opened and detainees were released, these families lived through an emotionally trying moment—a moment filled with hope but also with anguish, anger, and frustration.
On Tuesday, my team and I went to Sednaya prison for the first time. We saw hundreds of people waiting outside. I spoke to an elderly woman who stood there since 7 am, desperate for any scrap of information about her son missing for over ten years.
Inside the prison, we saw piles of damaged documents scattered throughout different rooms. These records may contain crucial information that could help families find long-awaited answers.”
Mohammad al-Bashir, head of the interim government in Syria, has spoken to worshippers during the first Friday prayers since the ousting of the Assad regime.
More than 44,875 Palestinians have been killed and 106,454 injured in Israel’s military offensive on Gaza since 7 October 2023, the Gaza health ministry said in a statement on Friday.
EU to deliver aid to Syria via Turkey
The European Commission on Friday announced the launch of an “air bridge” operation aimed at delivering an initial 50 tonnes of health supplies to Syria via neighbouring Turkey, AFP reported.
The items from EU stockpiles in Dubai will be flown to Adana, Turkey for distribution in Syria “in the coming days,” according to a commission statement.
A further 46 tonnes of relief supplies will be trucked from a stockpile in Denmark to Adana for distribution in Syria by Unicef and the World Health Organization.
The king of Bahrain, King Hamad, has told Syrian rebel leader Abu Mohammed al-Jolani that Bahrain is ready to cooperate with the new authorities, the official BNA news agency reported Friday.
It said that in a letter addressed to Jolani using his real name, Ahmed al-Sharaa, the monarch said Bahrain, the current Arab summit president, was ready to “continue consultations and coordination with Syria”.
A Dutch court has rejected a bid by 10 pro-Palestinian NGOs to stop the Netherlands from exporting weapons to Israel and trading with Israeli settlements in occupied Palestinian territories, Reuters reports.
The Hague district court sided with the Dutch state’s assertion that it continually assesses the risk of arms and dual-use goods exported to Israel to prevent violations of international law. “The interim relief court finds that there is no reason to impose a total ban on the export of military and dual-use goods on the state,” the court said in a statement.
The plaintiffs, citing high civilian casualties in Israel’s war in the Gaza Strip, had argued that the Dutch state, as a signatory to the 1948 Genocide Convention, has a duty to take all reasonable measures at its disposal to prevent genocide.
The NGOs cited a January order to Israel by the International Court of Justice to prevent acts of genocide in Gaza. Israel has said the accusations of genocide in its Gaza campaign are baseless.
Friday’s ruling appears to contradict the finding of an earlier, separate case, which saw a Dutch court order the government to block all exports of F-35 fighter jet parts to Israel over concerns they could be used to violate international law during the war in Gaza. The government has appealed that ruling.
The first Friday prayers since the change of regime are underway, here are a few photos from the wires:
Days after the Assad regime was toppled, it remains to be seen how the change in power will impact Syria’s minorities.
The Kurds, who faced discrimination during the more than 50 years of Assad family rule, have made overtures to the Islamist-led rebels who seized power, but some in the community fear the transition could see it lose the hard-won gains it made during the war, including limited self-rule.
Mutlu Civiroglu, a Washington-based analyst and expert on the Kurds, told AFP that the fate of Syria’s Kurdish authorities “remains uncertain”, particularly as they face “mounting pressure from the Turkish government and factions under its control”.
Syria’s new leaders have said repeatedly that religious minorities will not be harmed under their rule, but they have yet to mention ethnic minorities like the Kurds.
The Catholic Marist Brothers of Aleppo, one of nearly a dozen Christian communities in Syria’s second city, said they were told during a meeting between rebels and local Christian representatives that nothing would change. So far, the statement has proven true, Brother Georges Sabe told AFP.
But he added: “During 13 years of war, I learned to live day by day. We’ll see what tomorrow brings.”
In the southern city of Sweida, the heartland of Syria’s Druze minority where anti-government demonstrations have been held for more than a year, hundreds took to the streets on Friday, singing and clapping in jubilation.
“Our joy is indescribable,” Haitham Hudeifa, 54, told AFP. “Every province is celebrating this great victory.”
The dramatic collapse of Bashar al-Assad’s Syrian regime has thrown light into the dark corners of his rule, including the industrial-scale export of the banned drug captagon.
Victorious Islamist-led fighters have seized military bases and distribution hubs for the amphetamine-type stimulant, which has flooded the hidden market across the Middle East.
Led by the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) group, the rebels say they found a vast haul of drugs and vowed to destroy them. HTS fighters allowed AFP journalists into a warehouse at a quarry on the outskirts of Damascus, here’s what they found:
News agency Agence France-Presse is reporting that thousands have gathered at Damascus’s Umayyad Mosque ahead of Friday prayers.
Men, women and children have flocked to the mosque where the leader of the Islamist rebels who seized power last week is expected.
Some raised the Syrian independence flag, used by the opposition since the 2011 uprising, while others chanted: “one, one, one, the Syrian people are one”.
Aya Majzoub, Amnesty International’s deputy regional director for the Middle East and North Africa, has described a visit to the Assad regime’s security and intelligence branches in Damascus.
Here’s what she wrote on social media:
For years, survivors had described the horrors they experienced in these underground dungeons. But nothing could have prepared us for what we saw.
These underground labyrinths are literally hell on earth. They were overcrowded, crawling with cockroaches and other insects, lacked ventilation. They still smell of blood and death.”
Families continue to desperately search for their loved ones in hospitals, morgues and prisons, she said, with some resorting to searching through body bags to obtain some closure.
“But many bodies are beyond recognition, mutilated by years of torture and starvation. Tens of thousands remain missing,” she added.
Turkey to reopen its embassy in Syria
Turkey has tasked a temporary charge d’affaires with reopening its embassy in Syria, according to the state-run media Anadolu Agency.
The Turkish Embassy in Damascus suspended operations in 2012 amid concerns over escalating security problems during the Syrian civil war.
Updated
The Associated Press has spoken to Travis Timmerman, the American citizen found this week in the suburbs of Damascus and who said he had been detained seven months earlier after crossing into the country by foot during a Christian pilgrimage.
Speaking from a hotel room in Damascus, Timmerman described his release as a “blessing”.
He said he was among the thousands of people released from Syria’s sprawling military prisons this week. He was freed by “the liberators who came into the prison and knocked the door down (of his cell) with a hammer,” he said.
He said that women had been in the cells above him and that he had regularly heard them singing and teaching their children. He also heard some of the men being beaten regularly. “I was never beaten,” he said.
The 29-year-old didn’t seem bitter about the time he had spent locked up. “It is a time of solace and you can meditate on your life,” he told AP. “It was good for me.”
Here are the latest photos of Syria from the wires:
Rebel leader urges Syrians to celebrate in the streets on Friday
The leader of the Islamist rebels that seized power in Syria last week has called on people to take to the streets to celebrate what he described as “the victory of the blessed revolution” on Friday.
In a video message shared on Telegram, Abu Mohammed al-Jolani, the leader of the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham group, who is now using his real name Ahmed al-Sharaa, called on people to “go to the streets to express their joy”.
His call comes ahead of the first Friday prayers since Syria’s new leadership took control. During the early days of Syria’s uprising in 2011, protesters would usually gather after Friday prayers.
He is set to attend Friday prayers at Damascus’s landmark Umayyad mosque.
Opening summary
Hello, welcome to our live coverage of events in Syria and around the Middle East. It’s a little after noon in Damascus. Here are the major developments:
The US secretary of state, Anthony Blinken, is wrapping up a visit to Turkey as part of a broader effort to rally support across the Middle East for a peaceful political transition in Syria. The US administration is worried that a power vacuum in Syria could worsen tensions in the region, already heightened by multiple conflicts, and create conditions for the Islamic State group to regain territory and influence.
Blinken said Friday that there’s broad agreement on what both Turkey and the US would like to see in Syria following concerns about the two NATO allies’ competing interests in Syria, as Turkey targets a US-backed Kurdish group seen as key to containing the extremists.
Blinken also said he saw “encouraging signs” of progress toward a ceasefire in Gaza and urged Turkey to use its influence to encourage Hamas to accept. “We discussed Gaza, and we discussed I think the opportunity... to get a ceasefire in place. And what we’ve seen in the last couple of weeks are more encouraging signs that that is possible,” Blinken told reporters.
G7 leaders are set to gather virtually on Friday afternoon to discuss Syria. The leaders have said they are prepared to support a transition to an “inclusive and non-sectarian” government, and emphasised “the importance of holding the Assad regime accountable for its crimes.”
Russia has also reportedly established direct contact with the political committee of Syria’s Islamist rebel group, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, according to the Interfax news agency, which quoted Russia’s deputy foreign minister, Mikhail Bogdanov. In comments to reporters, Bogdanov reportedly said Moscow aims to maintain its military bases in Syria.
Israel’s defence minister, Israel Katz, has ordered the military to “prepare to remain” throughout the winter in the UN-patrolled buffer zone between Israeli and Syrian forces on the strategic Golan Heights. Israel seized the demilitarised zone on Sunday, hours after Syrian rebels ousted Bashar al-Assad.
In the US, a former Syrian military official who oversaw a prison where alleged human rights abuses took place has been charged by a federal grand jury with several counts of torture and conspiracy to commit a crime. Samir Ousman al-Sheikh, who oversaw Syria’s infamous Adra Prison from 2005 to 2008 under recently ousted President Bashar Assad, was arrested in July on visa fraud charges.
