A war monitor says Bashar Assad has fled Syria as terrorists enter Damascus

The head of the opposition group in Syria said early Sunday that President Bashar Assad turned his back on his way to an unknown place, fleeing the terrorists who claimed to have entered Damascus after a dramatic march across the country.

Syrian opposition forces said early Sunday morning local time that they had entered Damascus. Residents of the capital reported the sound of gunfire and explosions, and President Bashar Assad’s whereabouts are unknown.

There is no official statement from the Syrian government. The pro-government radio station Sham FM reported that Damascus airport was evacuated and all flights were grounded.

The militants also announced that they had entered the notorious Saydnaya military prison north of the capital and “liberated our prisoners” there.

Damascus was expected to fall, three US officials previously told CBS News, after Syrian insurgents surrounded the capital in a swift attack. Syrian rebels also claimed early Sunday that they captured the key central city of Homs.

Iranian forces protecting Assad have “largely withdrawn” from Syria, US officials say. The government was forced to deny rumors that Assad had fled the country.

Syrian rebels they arrived in the Damascus area on Saturday as part of a fast-moving offensive that has seen them take other major cities in Syria, opposition activists and a rebel commander said on Saturday.

The development this past week was one of the biggest in recent years by the opposition, led by a group that has its roots in al-Qaida and is considered a terrorist organization by the US and the United Nations. In their struggle to topple Assad’s government, the rebels, led by the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham group, or HTS, have met little resistance from the Syrian army.

For the first time in the protracted civil war, the government held only three of the 14 provincial capitals: Damascus, Latakia and Tartus.

Rami Abdurrahman, head of the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which monitors the opposition, said rebels were active in the Damascus suburbs of Maadamiyah, Jaramana and Daraya. He also added that the representatives of the opposition groups on Saturday were also marching from eastern Syria towards the Damascus area of ​​Harasta.

The rebel commander, Hassan Abdul-Ghani, posted on the Telegram messaging app that opposition forces had begun the “final phase” of their offensive around Damascus. He added that rebels from southern Syria are heading towards Damascus.

Ghani said on Sunday morning that the army had “fully liberated” Homs, Syria’s third-largest city, Reuters reported, as government forces reportedly abandoned the city. If they had indeed captured Homs, they would have severed communications between Damascus, Assad’s capital, and the northern coastal region where the president enjoys widespread support.

His main international backer, Russia, is preoccupied with its war in Ukraine, and Lebanon’s powerful Hezbollah, which once sent thousands of fighters to bolster its forces, has been weakened by a yearlong conflict with Israel. Iran, on the other hand, has seen its proxies throughout the region destroyed by regular Israeli airstrikes. The Israel Defense Forces said on Saturday after armed people attacked the UN compound in the Hader area, its forces are currently helping the UN forces to end the attack.

On Saturday, President-elect Donald Trump commented on Truth Social’s situation, saying, “THE UNITED STATES SHOULD NOT HAVE YOUR LAW. THIS IS NOT OUR FIGHT. LET IT PLAY. DON’T JOIN!”

Three US officials told CBS News that the rule of the al-Assad family that began in 1971 appears to be coming to an end.

“The United States will not…enter the middle of the Syrian civil war,” White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan told an audience at the Reagan National Defense Forum, an annual gathering of national security officials, defense companies. and lawmakers at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley, California. “What we’re going to do is focus on America’s national security priorities and interests.”

He said the US would continue to act as necessary to keep the Islamic State – a violent anti-Western group not known to be involved in the attack but whose people sleep in the Syrian desert – from exploiting the loopholes the war has revealed.

How did the conflict begin?

Thousands of people fled the area amid the dramatic escalation of the civil war, which raged without much progress on either side for years until the revolutionaries ran wild about two weeks ago.

The capture of Homs was a major victory for the rebels, who had already captured the northern cities of Aleppo and Hama, as well as large parts of the south, in a lightning attack that began on November 27. It was a change. Aleppo is the second largest city in Syria.

HTS leader Abu Mohammed al-Golani told CNN in an exclusive interview Thursday from Syria that the goal of the attack is to topple the Assad government.

The Syrian army withdrew from southern Syria on Saturday, leaving other areas of the country, including two provincial capitals, under the control of opposition representatives, the army and an opposition war monitor said. The redeployment away from the southern provinces of Daraa and Sweida came as the Syrian army sent a large number of reinforcements to secure Homs.

The Syrian army said in a statement early Saturday that it had re-deployed and repositioned areas in Sweida and Daraa after attacks by “terrorists.” The army said it was imposing “a strong and consistent belt of defense and security in the area,” apparently to protect Damascus in the south.

Since the start of the conflict in Syria in March 2011, the Syrian government has been referring to the gunmen of the opposition groups as terrorists.

In the gas-rich country of Qatar, the foreign ministers of Iran, Russia and Turkey were scheduled to meet to discuss the situation in Syria. Turkey is a major supporter of the rebels seeking to overthrow Assad.

The head of the Qatari embassy, ​​Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani, criticized Assad for failing to take advantage of the truce in recent years to address the country’s current problems. “Assad did not seize this opportunity to start getting involved and restoring his relationship with his people,” he said.

Sheikh Mohammed said he was surprised by how quickly the rebels had moved and said there was a real threat to “maintaining the territorial integrity of Syria.” He said war “can damage and destroy what is left if there is no sense of urgency” to start a political process.

After the fall of the cities of Daraa and Sweida early Saturday, Syrian government forces remain in control of five provincial capitals – Damascus, Homs and Quneitra, as well as Latakia and Tartus on the Mediterranean coast.

Tartus is home to Russia’s only naval base outside the former Soviet Union and Latakia is home to Russia’s largest air base.

On Friday, the US-backed forces of the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) captured large parts of the eastern province of Deir el-Zour on the border with Iraq and the provincial capital of the same name. The capture of Deir el-Zour is a blow to Iran’s influence in the region as this area is the gateway to the Mediterranean-Iran corridor, a supply line for fighters supported by Iran, including Hezbollah in Lebanon.

With the capture of the main border crossing with Iraq by the SDF and after opposition forces took control of the Naseeb border crossing into Jordan in southern Syria, the Syrian government’s gateway to the outside world is the Masnaa border crossing into Lebanon.

Margaret Brennan contributed to this report.