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[ti-amie]

Assad has left Damascus, senior army officers say; Syria rebels say they are in capital
By Suleiman Al-Khalidi and Timour Azhari
December 7, 202410:11 PM ESTUpdated 15 min ago

Summary
Assad boards plane, leaves Damascus, say senior army officers
Assad's destination unknown, officers say
Syrian rebels say they have entered the capital
After years of little movement, rebels mount lightening advance
Insurgent leader urges no reprisals

AMMAN/BEIRUT, Dec 8 (Reuters) - Syrian President Bashar al-Assad flew out of Damascus for an unknown destination on Sunday, two senior army officers told Reuters, as rebels said they had entered the capital with no sign of army deployments.

Thousands in cars and on foot congregated at a main square in Damascus waving and chanting "Freedom", witnesses said.

"We celebrate with the Syrian people the news of freeing our prisoners and releasing their chains and announcing the end of the era of injustice in Sednaya prison," said the rebels.
Sednaya is a large military prison on the outskirts Damascus where the Syrian government detained thousands.

A Syrian Air plane took off from Damascus airport around the time the capital was reported to have been taken by rebels, according to data from the Flightradar website.

The aircraft initially flew towards Syria's coastal region, a stronghold of Assad's Alawite sect, but then made an abrupt U-turn and flew in the opposite direction for a few minutes before disappearing off the map.

Reuters could not immediately ascertain who was on board.

Just hours earlier, rebels announced they had gained full control of the key city of Homs after only a day of fighting, leaving Assad's 24-year rule dangling by a thread.

Intense sounds of shooting were heard in the centre of the Damascus, two residents said on Sunday, although it was not immediately clear what the source of the shooting was.

In rural areas southwest of the capital, local youths and former rebels took advantage of the loss of authority to come to the streets in acts of defiance against the Assad family's authoritarian rule.
Thousands of Homs residents poured onto the streets after the army withdrew from the central city, dancing and chanting "Assad is gone, Homs is free" and "Long live Syria and down with Bashar al-Assad".
Rebels fired into the air in celebration, and youths tore down posters of the Syrian president, whose territorial control has collapsed in a dizzying week-long retreat by the military.

The fall of Homs gives the insurgents control over Syria's strategic heartland and a key highway crossroads, severing Damascus from the coastal region that is the stronghold of Assad's Alawite sect and where his Russian allies have a naval base and air base.

Homs' capture is also a powerful symbol of the rebel movement's dramatic comeback in the 13-year-old conflict. Swathes of Homs were destroyed by gruelling siege warfare between the rebels and the army years ago. The fighting ground down the insurgents, who were forced out.

Hayat Tahrir al-Sham commander Abu Mohammed al-Golani, the main rebel leader, called the capture of Homs a historic moment and urged fighters not to harm "those who drop their arms".
Rebels freed thousands of detainees from the city prison. Security forces left in haste after burning their documents.

Residents of numerous Damascus districts turned out to protest Assad on Saturday evening, and security forces were either unwilling or unable to clamp down.

Syrian rebel commander Hassan Abdul Ghani said in a statement early Sunday that operations were ongoing to "completely liberate" the countryside around Damascus and rebel forces were looking toward the capital.

In one suburb, a statue of Assad's father, the late President Hafez al-Assad, was toppled and torn apart.

The Syrian army said it was reinforcing around Damascus, and state television reported on Saturday that Assad remained in the city.

Outside the city, rebels swept across the entire southwest over 24 hours and established control.

EXISTENTIAL THREAT TO ASSAD RULE

The fall of Homs and threat to the capital pose an immediate existential danger to the Assad dynasty's five-decade reign over Syria and the continued influence there of its main regional backer, Iran.
The pace of events has stunned Arab capitals and raised fears of a new wave of regional instability.
Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Egypt, Iraq, Iran, Turkey and Russia issued a joint statement saying the crisis was a dangerous development and calling for a political solution.

But there was no indication they agreed on any concrete steps, with the situation inside Syria changing by the hour.

Syria's civil war, which erupted in 2011 as an uprising against Assad's rule, dragged in big outside powers, created space for jihadist militants to plot attacks around the world and sent millions of refugees into neighbouring states.

Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, the strongest rebel group, is the former al Qaeda affiliate in Syria regarded by the U.S. and others as a terrorist organisation, and many Syrians remain fearful it will impose draconian Islamist rule.

Golani has tried to reassure minorities that he will not interfere with them and the international community that he opposes Islamist attacks abroad. In Aleppo, which the rebels captured a week ago, there have not been reports of reprisals.

When asked on Saturday whether he believed Golani, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov replied, "The proof of the pudding is in the eating".

Lebanon's Iran-backed Hezbollah group withdrew from the Syrian city of Qusayr on the border with Lebanon before rebel forces seized it, Syrian army sources said on Sunday.

At least 150 armoured vehicles carrying hundreds of Hezbollah fighters left the city, long a point on the route for arms transfers and fighters moving in and out of Syria, the sources said. Israel hit one of the convoys as it was departing, one source said.

ALLIES' ROLE IN SUPPORTING ASSAD

Assad long relied on allies to subdue the rebels. Russian warplanes conducted bombing while Iran sent allied forces including Hezbollah and Iraqi militia to reinforce the Syrian military and storm insurgent strongholds.

But Russia has been focused on the war in Ukraine since 2022 and Hezbollah has suffered big losses in its own gruelling war with Israel, significantly limiting its ability or that of Iran to bolster Assad.
U.S. President-elect Donald Trump has said the U.S. should not be involved in the conflict and should "let it play out".

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Reporting by Suleiman al-Khalidi in Damascus, Timour Azhari in Beirut, Jaidaa Taha in Cairo, Phil Stewart and Idrees Ali in Washington; Writing by Angus McDowall, Matt Spetalnick and Michael Perry; Editing by Cynthia Osterman and William Mallard

https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-ea ... 024-12-07/

[ashkor87]

All this is the legacy of the 'great powers' - Britain, France.. who drew some arbitrary lines and created nations out of nothing.. the hapless people there are paying for it, and will continue to pay forver.. the poor people of Syria will probably have to endure an Afganistan-like Islamic state now.. the current leader is supposed to be moderate but, as we all know, moderates seldom surive - it is the most ruthless who come out on top..sigh...'the centre cannot hold'

[ti-amie]

‪Anonymous‬ ‪@youranoncentral.bsky.social‬
·
1m
Th plane allegedly carrying Assad dropped from an altitude of over 3,650 meters to 1,070 in minutes, just outside Lebanese airspace north of Akkar. Reportedly Lebanon denied the plane permission to land. Rumours are rife, no confirmation if that was his plane or the fate of those onboard.

[Suliso]

All this is the legacy of the 'great powers' - Britain, France.. who drew some arbitrary lines and created nations out of nothing.. the hapless people there are paying for it, and will continue to pay forver.. the poor people of Syria will probably have to endure an Afganistan-like Islamic state now.. the current leader is supposed to be moderate but, as we all know, moderates seldom surive - it is the most ruthless who come out on top..sigh...'the centre cannot hold'

That is true BUT it's also not obvious what lines could have been drawn in this area. That is if the goal is homogeneity instead of Indian style living together.

[ponchi101]

Just like in South America, the fixation with the past remains strong in other parts of the world. It is NEVER our fault; nope, our corrupt, inefficient governments are not to be blamed, and our lack of long term planning, meaning setting up a long term goal like the Japanese and the Koreans did after WWII and the Korean war, are not the reason why we are third world.
Nope. It all goes back to something that happened over 200 years ago, at a time in which technological differences were way smaller than today.
It is not us, it was the Brits.
It is not us, it was the French.
It is not us, it was the Spaniards.
And we will never prosper and become productive, viable countries until we decide to think of the now.

[ti-amie]

Tears of joy and sadness as ‘disappeared’ Syrians emerge from Assad’s prisons
Men, women and children, many jailed for speaking out against regime, reunite with their families

Bethan McKernan
Sun 8 Dec 2024 19.29 GMT
Share
As Syrian rebels led by the Islamist group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) captured city after city on the road to Damascus, forcing Bashar al-Assad to flee the country, they also opened the doors of the regime’s notorious prisons, into which upwards of 100,000 people disappeared during nearly 14 years of civil war.

Many emerged frail and emaciated into the bright December sunlight, greeted by weeping family members who had no idea they were still alive. Some struggled to comprehend that Assad was gone; a few held even longer had never even been told that he had succeeded his father, Hafez, who died in 2000.

Verified videos from Damascus showed dozens of women and small children being held in cells, the rebels opening the doors telling them not to be afraid.

The prisons infamous for torture in and around Damascus itself – including Sednaya, the most notorious, where satellite imagery showed a new crematorium was built in 2017 to dispose of bodies – were broken open early on Sunday. There are conflicting reports of underground cell blocks yet to be reached.

The photos and videos of reunited families are bittersweet. The stories of the prisoners are astonishing; they will take years to be told in full, further grim evidence of the crimes the Assad family committed against so many of their own people.

Al-Arabiya broadcast footage of a family arriving in Damascus to meet their released son, the elderly mother’s voice breaking with emotion as she embraced him for the first time in 14 years.

Raghad al-Tatary, a pilot who refused to bomb the city of Hama during the uprising against Hafez al-Assad in the 1980s, was freed after 43 years; Tal al-Mallouhi, 19 when she was arrested in 2009 for a blogpost criticising state corruption, was found alive.

One shaven-headed, shaking man in Sednaya had been so ill-treated he had lost his memory and struggled to talk. His family said he had been 20 and a medical student when he vanished 13 years ago.

Thousands of protesters were arrested during the 2011 Arab spring revolution for speaking out against the government. Leaked documents showed the state security apparatus viewed imprisonment as a key way to crush dissent. As the war deepened, the vast network of security branches, detention centres and prisons grew notorious for their brutal torture methods, which rights groups said were applied on an industrial scale.

Many Syrians were over the years brusquely informed by authorities that their relatives had been executed, sometimes years earlier.

For many, there is still an agonising wait, hoping against the odds that loved ones will be found alive. At a large bus station in central Damascus, the activist Abdulkafi al-Hamdo, who fled Aleppo with his young family in 2016 for years in exile in Idlib, filmed himself meeting anxious families waiting for cars and buses that were dropping off freed prisoners on Sunday.

One woman said her son was 18 when he was seized in 2012; she has not heard or seen anything of him since. “All these families here have a lot of fear in their hearts that their sons are dead,” she said. “Some of them have a small hope, a window of hope, that their children will be alive.”

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/ ... ds-prisons

[ashkor87]

Their bravery is as astonishing as their suffering is great...

[ti-amie]

Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris has reopened. I have no idea why that man was there but the look on Madam Macron's face is all of us.



https://www.npr.org/sections/the-pictur ... cron-trump

[mmmm8]

Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris has reopened. I have no idea why that man was there but the look on Madam Macron's face is all of us.



https://www.npr.org/sections/the-pictur ... cron-trump

I mean, she and Trump are both orange and should be in jail for sexual offences, so...

[ti-amie]

Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris has reopened. I have no idea why that man was there but the look on Madam Macron's face is all of us.



https://www.npr.org/sections/the-pictur ... cron-trump

I mean, she and Trump are both orange and should be in jail for sexual offences, so...

[ti-amie]

[ti-amie]

[Owendonovan]

I think Macron is explaining what happens in a church, what the cross symbolizes, and why there's a mostly naked man being elevated in said church.