Bashar Assad, Syria’s now former dictator, has fled the country, Russia’s Foreign Ministry said on Sunday, after opposition forces stormed the Syrian capital with scant resistance from the regime.
After negotiations with the rebels who took over Damascus — the capital — early Sunday, Assad “decided to resign from the presidency and left the country, instructing a peaceful transfer of power,” the ministry said in a post on Telegram. His whereabouts are still unknown, with some reports claiming he died in a plane crash.
Russia is asking “all parties involved to renounce the use of violence and to resolve all issues of governance by political means,” the Foreign Ministry said.
Syrian Prime Minister Mohammed Ghazi Jalali said the government was ready to “extend its hand” to the opposition and turn its functions over to a transitional government, AP reported. Reuters quoted rebel leader Abu Mohammed al-Golani as saying on Sunday that Syrian state institutions will be supervised by Jalali until they are handed over.
Assad had been in power for almost 25 years and his family had ruled the country for more than half a century. His Iran- and Russia-allied regime brutally curtailed human rights, deploying chemical weapons against civilians as part of the civil war that has raged in the country since 2011.
The fast-moving rebel insurgency put two of Russia’s strategic military assets — an airbase in the Latakia province and a naval facility in Tartus on the Mediterranean near the Lebanese border — under serious threat, Reuters reported on Saturday. Satellite imagery showed ships had been leaving the Tartus naval base for several days.
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