As government forces loyal to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad were beaten in a couple of days, rebel militants said they had taken control of the capital city of Damascus early Sunday.
The 13-year civil conflict that has devastated the ancient land will enter a new phase with the rebels’ claim.
“We declare the city of Damascus free from the tyrant Bashar al-Assad,” said Hassan Abdul-Ghani, the senior leader of the terrorist organization Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, or HTS, in a WhatsApp thread. “To the displaced people around the world, Free Syria awaits you.”
The assertion made by the rebel has not been independently verified by NBC News.
The whereabouts of Assad was not immediately known. He has departed Damascus, according to several media sources, and Abdul-Ghani said that Assad had escaped. NBC News has not verified his location or departure.
Assad is in his home and has no plans to leave “unless in a peaceful manner that ensures the continued functioning of public institutions and state facilities, promoting security and reassurance for our fellow citizens,” according to Syria’s prime minister, Ghazi al-Jalali, amid reports that Assad has left the capital.
The administration, he said, is willing to work with “any leadership chosen by the Syrian people.”
According to HTS General Command, the inmates of Sednaya Prison were also released. According to Reuters, the Syrian government has imprisoned hundreds of people in the military prison outside of Damascus.
“We proclaim the end of the era of oppression in Sednaya Prison and share with the Syrian people the news of our captives’ release and the breaking of their chains.”
Damascus International Airport has been evacuated, all staff have been withdrawn, and all flights have been halted, according to Syrian official radio station Sham FM. Who was in control of the state outlet on Sunday remained unclear.
Global response
“Monitoring the extraordinary events in Syria and staying in constant touch with regional partners,” White House National Security Council spokesman Sean Savett said in a statement Saturday evening about President Joe Biden.
President-elect Donald Trump stated in all caps that the US should “have nothing to do with” the Syrian crisis in a post on his Truth Social platform on Saturday morning. “We’re not fighting this. Let it happen.
According to a post on X, the Israel Defense Forces have moved to the buffer zone between Israel and Syria in addition to other locations “to ensure the safety of the Golan Heights and the citizens of Israel.” “We emphasize that the IDF is not interfering with the internal events in Syria,” it said.
Shortly after rebels quickly overran government forces in the Syrian city of Homs on Friday, taking control of three of the country’s five main cities and leaving nothing to stop them from advancing on the capital, the militant group attack in Damascus collapsed. A day after claiming to have taken Daraa, HTS rebels said on Saturday ET that they had taken the city.
With around 900 American soldiers in northern Syria, the United States has been keeping a careful eye on events there.
The HTS rebels also took control of the central city of Hama, where government forces were pushed out on Thursday, and the northern city of Aleppo in less than two weeks.
The HTS strike was the first rebel offensive on Aleppo since Assad regained control of the city in 2016 thanks to a vicious air campaign carried out by Russian airplanes.
The HTS militants’ abrupt capture of the city was viewed as a setback to the foreign powers—Iran, Russia, and Iranian-backed Hezbollah—that have allowed Assad to maintain his hold on power for 24 years.
HTS’s swift progress coincides with a flurry of new combat in the Middle East, as Israel, supported by the United States, attempts to drive out Hamas in Gaza and uphold a precarious ceasefire with Hezbollah in Lebanon. Hezbollah and Hamas are both affiliated with Iran.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights stated Friday that Kurdish forces had taken control of government outposts in eastern Syria, close to the towns of Raqqa and Deir Ez-Zour, and that pro-Assad troops were engaged in combat.
Origins of HTS
Former Al Qaeda offshoot Jabhat al-Nusra gave rise to HTS, which the US and UN have classified as a terrorist group.
It is one among numerous opposing factions in Syria that are battling to overthrow the Assad government, which has killed hundreds of thousands of Syrians since the start of the civil war over 14 years ago.
Assad still controls 70% of Syria after a truce in 2020, but 6.8 million Syrians have left the nation.
Numerous people have fled to Europe, where the unexpected flood of Syrian migrants has stoked far-right anti-immigrant organizations from Portugal to Poland.
According to analysts, HTS’s recent combat victories are the result of four years of efforts to provide the opposition forces with drones and other advanced weapons of war so they can compete with Assad’s army.
Charles Lister, director of the Syria program at the Middle East Institute, a Washington-based think tank, wrote on X that “the expansion of units… along with large-scale indigenous rocket and missile production — has created a force that Assad’s regime has seriously struggled to defend against, let alone outmaneuver.”
