BEIRUT (AP) — The Syrian government fell early Sunday in a stunning end to the 50-year rule of the Assad family after a sudden rebel offensive sprinted across government-held
The Syrian government fell early Sunday in a stunning end to the 50-year rule of the Assad family after a sudden rebel offensive sprinted across government-held territory and entered the capital in 10 days.
Syrian state television aired a video statement by a group of men saying that President Bashar Assad has been overthrown and all detainees in jails have been set free.
The man who read the statement said the Operations Room to Conquer Damascus, an opposition group, called on all opposition fighters and citizens to preserve state institutions of “the free Syrian state.”
The statement emerged hours after the head of a Syrian opposition war monitor said Assad had left the country for an undisclosed location, fleeing ahead of insurgents who said they had entered Damascus following the remarkably swift advance across the country.
Syrian Prime Minister Mohammed Ghazi Jalali said the government was ready to “extend its hand” to the opposition and turn its functions over 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 in a video statement. He said he would go to his office to continue work in the morning and called on Syrian citizens not to deface public property.
He did not address reports that Assad had fled.
Rami Abdurrahman of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights told The Associated Press that Assad took a flight Sunday from Damascus.
State television in Iran, Assad’s main backer in the years of war in Syria, reported that Assad had left the capital. It cited Qatar’s Al Jazeera news network for the information and did not elaborate.
There was no immediate statement from the Syrian government.
As daylight broke over Damascus, crowds gathered to pray in the city’s mosques and to celebrate in the squares, chanting “God is great.” People also chanted anti-Assad slogans and honked car horns. In some areas, celebratory gunshots rang out.
Soldiers and police officers left their posts and fled, and looters broke into the headquarters of the Ministry of Defense.
“My feelings are indescribable,” said Omar Daher, a 29-year-old lawyer. “After the fear that he (Assad) and his father made us live in for many years, and the panic and state of terror that I was living in, I can’t believe it.”
Daher said his father was killed by security forces and his brother was in detention, his fate unknown. Assad “is a criminal, a tyrant and a dog,” he said.
“Damn his soul and the soul of the entire Assad family,” said Ghazal al-Sharif, another reveler in central Damascus.
