Syria: Assad Family’s 50 Years Regime Falls as Rebels Oust President Bashar Assad

The government of President Bashar Assad has fallen. The Associated Press reports that it fell early on Sunday, December 8, 2024, having been overwhelmed by a rebel offensive that captured the capital, Damascus, and sparked celebrations in the streets marking the end of the Assad family’s 50-year reign.

Syrian state television broadcast a video message from a group of men announcing that President Bashar Assad had been deposed and that all prisoners had been released.

The man who made the statement, representing the opposition group known as the Operations Room to Conquer Damascus, urged both rebel fighters and citizens to safeguard the 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 a remarkably swift advance across the country.

Many of the capital’s residents were in disbelief at the speed at which Assad lost his hold on the country after nearly 14 years of civil war that killed hundreds of thousands of people, displaced half the country’s prewar population of 23 million and drew in several foreign powers.

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 the streets, teen boys picked up weapons that had apparently been discarded by security forces and fired them in the air.

Soldiers and police officers left their posts and fled, and looters broke into the Defense Ministry. Videos from Damascus showed families wandering into the presidential palace, with some emerging carrying stacks of plates and other household items.

An image of Syrian President Bashar Assad, riddled with bullets, is seen on the facade of the provincial government office in the aftermath of the opposition’s takeover of Hama, Syria, Friday, Dec. 6, 2024. (AP Photo/Omar Albam)

Syria’s al-Watan newspaper, which was historically pro-government, wrote: “We are facing a new page for Syria. We thank God for not shedding more blood. We believe and trust that Syria will be for all Syrians.”

The newspaper added that media workers should not be blamed for publishing government statements in the past.

“We only carried out the instructions and published the news they sent us,” it said. “It quickly became clear now that it was false.”

A statement from the Alawite sect — to which Assad belongs and which has formed the core of his base — called on young Syrians to be “calm, rational and prudent and not to be dragged into what tears apart the unity of our country.”

“We were and still are advocates of peace and advocates of unity,” it said. The statement called for “the language of reason and dialogue to prevail over all parties in the service of Syria and its great people.”

Syrian Prime Minister Mohammed Ghazi Jalali said in a video statement that the government was ready to “extend its hand” to the opposition and turn its functions over to a transitional government.

He later told Saudi television network Al-Arabiyya that he does not know where Assad and the defense minister are. He said he lost communication with Assad late Saturday.

– Associated Press