Syria – years of reporting, the road to Damascus and the fall of al-Assad

A child gestures before the first Friday prayers at the Umayyad Mosque, after opposition fighters removed Syria's Bashar al-Assad, in Damascus on December 13, 2024 [Amr Abdallah Dalsh/Reuters]

I’ve covered Syria for years, from the start – when anti-regime protests began in March 2011.

We were in Deraa, southern Syria. It was a Friday and people called it the “Day of Dignity”. They took to the streets to protest the deaths of dozens of people killed by security forces in previous days.