The five-decade long reign of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s family has ended after rebel fighters captured the capital, Damascus, and the ruler fled with his family to Russia.
Oppositions forces entered the city early on Sunday (local time) and stormed Assad’s abandoned palace before appearing on state television to declare Syria to be free and sparking celebrations in the streets.
"A new history, my brothers, is being written in the entire region after this great victory," rebel commander Abu Mohammed al-Golani was quoted as telling a crowd in Damascus.
Assad flew to Russia, a country which had been supporting his brutal regime, where he and his family have been granted political asylum.
The Assad family had been in power since 1970 in the strategically located Middle Eastern country, which shares borders with Turkey, Iraq, Jordan, Israel and Lebanon and also lies on the Mediterranean Sea.
Assad, a trained doctor, assumed power in 2000 following the death of his father Hafez who had ruled the nation for 30 years after a military coup.
The regime was marked by repression, censorship and human rights violations with hundreds of thousands of political opponents jailed.
Syria has been ravaged by a civil war which has produced a massive death toll, major human dislocation and extensive infrastructure and property damage since 2011 following protests inspired by a surge in uprisings in the region during what become known as the “Arab Spring”.
Over two weeks, the rebels had been making important territorial gains in Syria, but the capitalhad been almost untouched by the civil war until it fell.
