Syrian rebels say Bashar al-Assad has fled Damascus and claim to have captured capital – live updates

Catching up with the Islamist rebels behind Syria’s extraordinary offensive? We have this handy explainer for you.

US president-elect Donald Trump said on Sunday that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad had “fled his country” after losing the backing of Russia.

“Assad is gone,” he said on his Truth Social platform. “His protector, Russia, Russia, Russia, led by Vladimir Putin, was not interested in protecting him any longer.”

A portrait of President Assad on the side of a building in Damascus.

Celebrations in the Umayyad square, Damascus.

People gathered in Aleppo.

From Homs.

Rebel fighters parade detained members of Syrian government forces in Homs.

Kurdish forces are the latest to react to the dramatic developments in Syria overnight and into the early hours of Sunday morning, when Islamist rebels fired celebratory gunfire into the sky as they claimed the capital city of Damascus, and later to have toppled president Assad.

The commander of Syria’s US-backed, Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), which controls swathes of the country’s northeast, hailed the events as “historic”, Agence France Presse reports.

“In Syria, we are living through historic moments as we witness the fall of the authoritarian regime in Damascus,” commander Mazloum Abdi said in a statement on Telegram, adding that “this change presents an opportunity to build a new Syria based on democracy and justice that guarantees the rights of all Syrians”.

Syria’s prime minister, Ghazi al-Jalali, has told Al Arabiya in an interview that he has had contact with rebel commander and HTS leader Abu Mohammed al-Jolani about how to manage the current period.

The Syrian PM has said the country should hold free elections so the Syrian people can choose who they want to lead the country, Reuters has reported.

His comments come after president Assad reportedly boarded a plane and fled as rebels seized control of the capital city in the early hours of Sunday morning.

Israel’s military has issued a statement saying that it does not intervene in events taking place in Syria, Reuters reports.

However, the country’s military did say that it had deployed forces in a buffer zone monitored by the United Nations and at a number of points necessary for defence in light of the events in the Arab nation.

Syrian state TV has broadcast a video from Syria’s rebel factions saying President Bashar al-Assad has been overthrown and all jail detainees freed.

In their first televised announcement since their rapid and surprise offensive, they called on all opposition fighters and citizens to preserve state institutions of “the free Syrian state”.

In another symbolic moment, people in Damascus have trampled upon the fallen statue of Bashar al-Assad’s father, Hafez, who ruled the country with an iron fist for nearly 30 years.

The Guardian’s Ruth Michaelson has the full report on the extraordinary turn of events in Syria, and what looks like the end of an era for the Assad regime.

“Today is the end of 54 years of the reign of Assad family in Syria. This is the only regime I knew all of my life,” said doctor Zaher Sahloul, a Syrian-American physician who organised medical missions into Syria, including hospitals in Aleppo that were targeted by Syrian and Russian airstrikes.

“I don’t cry often in my adult life but today I did. It has been fourteen long years of horror. This is our Berlin Wall moment,” he said.

The fall of the Assad regime is momentous for Syria.

President Assad had been clinging to power for 14 years as the country fragmented amid a brutal civil war that became a proxy battlefield for regional and international powers.

As the Associated Press writes, his downfall is in stark contrast to his first months as Syria’s unlikely president in 2000, when many hoped he would be a young reformer after three decades of his father’s strongman rule.

The Western-educated ophthalmologist, then only 34, was a rather geeky, tech-savvy fan of computers with a gentle demeanor.

But when faced with protests against his rule that erupted in March 2011, Assad turned to the brutal tactics of his father in an attempt to crush them.

As the uprising hemorrhaged into an outright civil war, writes the AP, he unleashed his military to blast opposition-held cities, with support from allies Iran and Russia.

International rights groups and prosecutors alleged widespread use of torture and extrajudicial executions in Syria‘s government-run detention centers.

The Syrian war has killed nearly half a million people and displaced half the country’s pre-war population of 23 million. As the uprising spiralled into a civil war, millions of Syrians fled across the borders into Jordan, Turkey, Iraq and Lebanon and on to Europe.

We are now hearing from people in the capital who are rejoicing the apparent end of the Assad regime.

“My feelings are indescribable,” Omar Daher, a 29-year-old lawyer told Associated Press. “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.

Crowds of Syrians gathered to celebrate in the central squares of Damascus, chanting anti-Assad slogans and honking car horns. In some areas, celebratory gunshots rang out.

“Damn his soul and the soul of the entire Assad family,” said Ghazal al-Sharif, another reveler in central Damascus. “It is the prayer of every oppressed person and God answered it today. We thought we would never see it, but thank God, we saw it.”

Syria’s White Helmets civil defence forces has released a statement about the extraordinary events of the past few days, writes the Guardian’s Faisal Ali.

“The sun of freedom rises on the Syrians… the moment that has been long awaited for years… even decades… Syria, the homeland, is writing history today,” the group said in a video statement posted on X.

“Syria is on the path to justice… today is the day of work and construction.”

A jubilant mood on the streets of Damascus at dawn, hours after a coalition of Islamist-led rebels claimed to have taken over the capital.

An incredible shot here.

The celebrations continue.

Dawn is breaking over the Syrian capital Damascus after an extraordinary sequence of events.

Television footage showed rebels in fatigues firing celebratory rounds into the sky, and yelling “Allah Akbar” hours after Islamist rebels claimed control of the city, and amid reports President Bashar al-Assad has fled the country to an unknown location.

On the streets people climbed on tanks to chant and gathered to celebrate.

In a stunning end to the 50-year rule of the Assad family, the Syrian government appears to have fallen.