The Syrian government fell early Sunday after rebels entered the capital of Damascus, ending the Assad family’s 50-year rule in the war-torn country.
The rebels’ victory concluded a 10-day offensive in which fighters sprinted across the country and seized much of what had been government-held land, including the cities of Aleppo and Hama, and, the night before, the central city of Homs.
President Bashar Assad was overthrown, according to a statement read by a group of men on Syrian state television, adding that all people detained in jails were freed.
The statement announced “the liberation of the city of Damascus, the toppling of the dictator Bashar al-Assad, and the liberation of all oppressed prisoners from the regime’s jails,” The New York Times reported.
Multiple reports indicated Assad fled the capital before opposition fighters entered the city. Hours earlier, the head of a Syrian opposition war monitor said Assad had left the country for an undisclosed location.
Iranian state media reported that Assad left the capital, citing Qatar’s Al Jazeera news outlet. Iran has been Assad’s main backer in the Syrian civil war. Russia’s foreign ministry said on Sunday that Assad had resigned and left Syria following talks with “several parties of the armed conflict,” the Times reported.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights’ Rami Abdurrahman told The Associated Press that Assad took a flight Sunday from Damascus.
Syrian Prime Minister Mohammed Ghazi Jalali said in a video statement that the government was ready to “extend its hand” to the opposition forces and hand over its functions to a transitional government.
“I am in my house and I have not left, and this is because of my belonging to this country,” Jalili said, adding that he would go to his office to continue work in the morning and asked Syrian citizens not to deface public property.
Citizens took to the streets in celebration on Sunday and many gathered to pray in mosques, the AP reported. Looters broke into the Ministry of Defense headquarters, as soldiers and police officers fled their posts. Police headquarters also appeared to be abandoned, the AP said.
The Associated Press contributed.
