The end of the Assad family's brutal 50-plus years of rule over Syria has been celebrated on the streets of the capital Damascus with gunfire and wild street rallies.
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The end of the Assad family’s brutal 50-plus years of rule over Syria has been celebrated on the streets of the capital Damascus with gunfire, jubilation, and wild street rallies.
AP reports joyful crowds thronged central squares in Damascus, waving the Syrian revolutionary flag in scenes that recalled the early days of the Arab Spring uprising, before a brutal crackdown and the rise of a bloody insurgency plunged the country into a nearly 14-year civil war.
Others gleefully ransacked the presidential palace and the Assad family residence after President Bashar Assad and other top officials vanished, their whereabouts unknown.
Russia, a close ally, said Assad left the country after negotiations with rebel groups and had given instructions to transfer power peacefully.
Abu Mohammed al-Golani, a former al-Qaida commander who cut ties with the group years ago and says he embraces pluralism and religious tolerance, leads the biggest rebel faction and is poised to chart the country’s future direction.
As Joel Pollak of Breitbart News reported, the sudden collapse of the Assad regime, dating back over half a century to the rule of Hafez al-Assad, Bashar’s father, has rocked the Middle East and could mean the Iranian regime, a Syrian ally, is in danger.
Assad was one of the most notorious tyrants in the world, one who used chemical weapons against his own people.
His despotic regime nearly collapsed in the civil war that erupted during the Arab Spring in 2011, but he was shored up by Russian and Iranian forces.