Syrian dictator Bashar Assad flees into exile as Islamist rebels conquer country

JERUSALEM — Syrian dictator Bashar Assad, who used chemical weapons multiple times on his population, has fled Syria after rebels stormed the capital city of Damascus, according to Reuters.

Assad, who was trained as an eye doctor in the United Kingdom before succeeding his father, and his British-born wife, Asma al-Assad, fled with their three children, according to Syrian television reports. It was not known where they were headed.

A video statement from a group of men on Syrian state TV said that Assad had been overthrown and all prisoners have been set free. 

The man who read a statement said the Operations Room to Conquer Damascus is calling on all opposition fighters and citizens to preserve state institutions of “the free Syrian state.”

“Long live the free Syrian state that is to all Syrians and all” their sects and ethnic groups, they said.

Syrian Prime Minister Mohammad Ghazi al-Jalali said early Sunday he didn’t know the whereabouts of Assad. He told the Saudi television network Al-Arabiyya that they lost communication Saturday night. 

Crowds of Syrians gathered in the central squares of Damascus to celebrate. Some chanted anti-Assad slogans and honked horns. In other areas, celebratory gunshots rang out. 

Syria has been embroiled in a bloody, nearly 14-year civil war as Islamist rebels looked to overthrow the Assad dynasty. The apparent collapse of more than 50 years of Assad family rule over the Syrian Arabian Republic is a monumental turning point in Middle East power politics. 

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A coalition of largely radical Islamist groups dislodged Assad’s Iran-backed regime. The U.S.-designated terrorist group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), the Islamist former Al-Qaeda affiliate that is part of the rebel forces, played the decisive role in evicting Assad, who inherited his presidency in 2000 following the death of his father, Hafez Assad.

Abu Mohammed al-Golani, the Islamist leader of HTS, who has a $10 million bounty on his head from the U.S., seeks to present a toned-down version of the radical Islamism that has defined his years of fighting in Syria and in Iraq against American troops. Al-Golani was detained by the U.S. military in the first decade of this century.

Syrian experts have told Fox News Digital that HTS seeks to impose a totalitarian Islamist regime on the population. Phillip Smyth, an expert on Iranian regime proxy groups and Syria, who is with the Atlantic Council, told Fox News Digital, “HTS is a group that is an outgrowth of Al-Qaeda and has connections to Turkey. Their endgame is to create a Taliban-esque society with a few tweaks.”

Al-Golani banned his fighters from opening fire into the air in Damascus. 

“Public institutions will remain under the supervision of the prime minister until they are officially handed over,” he said in a statement published on his group’s social media outlets.

Assad’s decision in 2011 to launch a violent crackdown on pro-democracy Syrian activists during the Arab Spring revolts, which engulfed Egypt and Tunisia, resulted in the protracted civil war. Assad’s scorched-earth policy against the citizens of his country caused the killing of over 500,000 people. The UN recently announced that it has stopped tracking the mounting death toll.

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The Wall Street Journal reported on Friday that Egyptian and Jordanian officials urged Assad to flee Syria and form a government-in-exile. Jordan’s government denied the report.

In 2015, Assad’s regime was teetering when Russia intervened to save the dictatorship. The U.S.-sanctioned Lebanese terrorist movement, Hezbollah, and its main sponsor, Iran, both threw their weight behind Assad’s regime. 

The rebel forces who routed Assad’s forces—with the swift capture of the major Syrian cities of Aleppo, Hamas, and Homs—jolted both Putin and Iran. Ukraine’s resistance to Russia’s invasion of its territory has weakened Moscow. Israel has inflicted a number of aerial attacks on Iran’s military infrastructure since Tehran’s ally, Hamas, launched a surprise attack against the Jewish state on October 7, 2023.

The United Nations Security Council passed Resolution 2254 in 2015, which called for a cease-fire, UN-run elections and a new constitution. Assad rejected the resolution’s implementation. 

After Assad launched a shocking mass chemical weapons strike on Syrian civilians in 2013, in which more than 1,400 people were killed, former President Obama’s administration reneged on its promise to take military action against Assad. 

The origin of Assad’s forced departure can be traced back to a group of schoolboys in the southwestern dusty city of Daraa—the cradle of the Syrian revolt—in 2011.  The young boys used cans of graffiti to write on a concrete wall: “The people / want / to topple the regime!”

Assad’s cousin, Gen. Atef Najeeb, oversaw an operation that involved reported torture of the arrested 15 boys between the ages of 10 and 15. Syrian officials ripped the boy’s fingernails out and burned and beat them.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.