CNN
—
Syrian rebels seem to have entered the capital Damascus after dealing with scant resistance from regime forces, as President Bashar al-Assad’s decades-long grip on energy appeared to wane by the minute.
“The rebels are in Barzeh,” a neighborhood inside Damascus metropolis, one resident informed CNN, including that clashes had been at the moment going down.
By early Sunday morning, a supply accustomed to the insurgent’s advance informed CNN: “Militarily, Damascus has fallen.”
Hours earlier than, Syria’s fundamental armed opposition group stated it had “totally liberated” the most important metropolis of Homs, north of the capital. Syrians had been seen tearing down and setting hearth to posters of Assad after rebels had entered the town, in scenes paying homage to pro-democracy protests within the metropolis throughout the Arab Spring greater than a decade in the past.
Just a day in the past, observers had been saying Homs was of big strategic significance to the rebels, as its seize successfully break up the Assad regime in two, severing the federal government in Damascus from the coast. But by Sunday morning, it was not clear there was even a functioning regime left to talk of.
The rebels’ progress has been stunningly swift. After bursting out of their territory within the northwestern Idlib province, the primary insurgent group captured Aleppo and Hama in simply over per week of combating. After they had been joined Friday by a recent rebellion within the southern Daraa province, each teams set their sights on Damascus.
“We had been in a position to liberate 4 Syrian cities inside 24 hours: Daraa, Quneitra, Suwayda and Homs,” stated Lt. Col. Hassan Abdul Ghani, a spokesperson for the primary insurgent group. “Our operations are persevering with to liberate your entire Damascus countryside, and our eyes are on the capital, Damascus.”
Earlier Saturday, the southern rebels stated that they had reached “the gates of Damascus.” Videos geolocated by CNN confirmed residents toppling an enormous statue of Assad’s father, the previous president Hafez al-Assad, within the metropolis’s Jaramana suburb. Over the course of the night, rebels had been energetic in a number of pockets of the suburbs, inside just a few miles of the presidential palace.
It had been anticipated that the regime would mount a firmer protection of Damascus, however the rebels stated that senior Assad regime officers had been making ready to defect to them within the capital.
Although the official line from the Syrian president’s workplace is that Assad has not fled, a supply with data of the scenario informed CNN that Assad is nowhere to be present in Damascus.
After regime forces give up Homs, residents started to flood the streets in celebration. Videos geolocated by CNN confirmed residents tearing aside posters of Assad and his father on high of the gates to the Officers’ Club within the metropolis middle.
The scenes recall some of the symbolic photographs from the Arab Spring in Syria, when pro-democracy protesters tore down Assad posters on high of the identical gates in 2011.
Nearby, residents had been additionally seen celebrating in Clock Tower sq., one of many focal factors of the unique anti-government protests.
To stamp out these protests, the regime military launched a brutal assault on the town’s Khalidiya neighborhood in 2012, utilizing tanks and mortars to assault civilian houses, inflicting some to break down. Regime troops stormed the world, slaughtering households of their houses. Around 200 persons are thought to have died within the bloodbath.
In a video live-streamed from Clock Tower sq. by a resident late Saturday, a resident threw a framed portrait of Assad on the bottom, shattering its glass. Over the course of 10 minutes, Syrians stuffed the sq., chanting in celebration on the rising obvious collapse of the Assad regime.
