Syrian Rebels Capture Damascus; Assad Regime Ends

Photo Credit: Wikimedia / Vyacheslav Argenberg / http://www.vascoplanet.com

The alleyways in the Old City of Damascus.

The capital city of Damascus was captured by Syrian rebels in the wee hours of Sunday morning, ending the regime of President Bashar al-Assad, and with it one of the bloodiest chapters in the history of the Middle East.

Syrian rebels led by the Islamist Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) organization – formerly the Al Qaeda-linked Jabhat al-Nusra – captured the surrounding suburbs of the capital earlier in the evening, and entered the city a few hours later.

Assad and his brother Maher — who commanded the Syrian Army — fled the country with their families, according to multiple reports. Their location was unknown as of 3 am Sunday.

“The rebels are in Barzeh,” a Damascus resident told CNN at around 2:30 am local time, adding there was fighting in the capital. Barzeh is a neighborhood in the city.

“I saw rebel fighters moving through the inner alleys of Barzeh . . . I can hear very loud sounds of clashes. The electricity is cut off, and the internet is very weak. People are staying in their houses.”

A separate source told the news outlet, “Militarily, Damascus has fallen,” adding that special rebel operatives had entered the capital and were taking up key positions in “strategic places.”

Syria’s third-largest city, Homs, fell earlier in the evening, about eight days after the fall of Aleppo and Hama, further north. The rebels captured the southern Syrian cities of Dara’a, Quneitra, and Suweida late Friday.

Israel beefed up its forces along the northern border with Syria in the Golan Heights after helping to defend a UN post in the Hader area that was attacked late Saturday afternoon by armed gunmen near Israel’s border on the Syrian side of the Golan Heights.

“Over the past 24 hours, armed forces have entered the buffer zone on the Syrian side of the border with Israel,” Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar said in a statement late Saturday night.

“Among other actions, attacks were carried out against UNDOF forces in the area. Israel is concerned about violations of the 1974 Disengagement Agreement between Israel and Syria, which also pose a threat to its security, the safety of its communities, and its citizens, particularly in the Golan Heights region.

“The State of Israel does not intervene in the internal conflict in Syria,” the foreign minister stressed.

In the wake of the Hader incident, the rebel commander of operations published a special proclamation in which he emphasized that all international institutions and UN offices in Syria are institutions in the service of the Syrian people and there is an obligation to protect them and allow their work to continue anywhere in Syria, Abu Ali Express reported.

The rebel forces also issued an official statement announcing their full willingness to cooperate with international entities on the issue of the Assad regime’s chemical weapons, pledging not to allow such weapons to fall into “irresponsible hands” and emphasizing that the use of such weapons goes against their religious beliefs.

Assad used chemical weapons to attack the rebels and civilian communities in which they were located, during the decade-long civil war that began in 2011.

Despite the proclamations, Israeli Knesset Speaker Amir Ohana told Israel’s Channel 12 News in an interview Saturday night that neither the Assad regime nor the rebel forces are “lovers of Israel” and therefore, as the late Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin once said, “we wish success and good luck to both sides.”

Ohana said that from the Israeli point of view, the situation in Syria is “positive as it weakens Iran, Israel’s greatest enemy.”

Nevertheless, he said, “we are closely watching the situation, we’re prepared and ready for any challenge.”

Israel has sent reinforcements to the northern border in the Golan Heights, and the IDF said its top brass is holding situation assessments “every few hours” to monitor the swiftly changing events.