DAMASCUS: Celebra­tions erupted around Syria and crowds ransacked President Bashar al-Assad’s luxurious home on Sunday after rebels swept into Damascus and declared he had fled the country, in a spectacular end to five decades of rule by the Assad dynasty.

Residents in the capital were seen cheering in the streets as the rebel factions heralded the departure of “tyrant”, saying: “We declare the city of Damascus free.”

Most Syrians are too young to remember a time when the country was not ruled by the Assads.

Syrians strolled through the president’s palace after it was looted on Sunday following his ouster, with many wandering from room to room, posing for photographs, and with some taking items of furniture or ornaments.

Revelers on the streets celebrate end of five decades of rule by the Alawi dynasty

Women, children and men could be seen touring the home and its large garden, with the rooms completely empty, save some furniture and a portrait of Assad thrown on the floor.

The rooms of the residence had been left completely empty, save some furniture and a portrait of Assad discarded on the floor, while an entrance hall at the presidential palace not far away had been torched.

Video obtained by Reuters showed people entering the Al-Rawda Presidential Palace, as children ran through the grand rooms and men slid a large trunk across the ornate floor.

Several men carried smart chairs over their shoulders. In a storeroom, cupboards had been ransacked and objects strewn across the floor.

Video of another palace, the Muhajreen Palace, verified by Reuters, showed groups of men and women walking across a white marble floor and through tall wooden doors. A man carried a vase in his hand, and a large cabinet stood empty with its doors ajar.

Meanwhile, statues of his late father Hafez were toppled and trampled across the country.

Even prior to the rebels’ declaration of the fall of Damascus, statues of Hafez al-Assad had been toppled in other cities around the country.

In Jaramana, in the suburbs of Damascus, protesters brought down a statue of the late Syrian leader, cheering, applauding and chanting as it came down.

In Aleppo in northern Syria, images showed people toppling a statue of Bashar al-Assad’s brother Bassel as well as one of their father.

In Daraa in southern Syria, the cradle of the 2011 uprising, online images verified by AFP showed a rebel fighter driving a motorbike down a road and dragging a toppled statue of Hafez al-Assad behind him.

The large metal statue appeared to be light enough to pull because it was hollow.

In the port city of Tartus, resident Oday al-Khatib told AFP that protesters destroyed a statue of the former president.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights war monitor confirmed that Tartus residents had “destroyed a statue of Hafez al-Assad in the city”, and another in Latakia, also on the Syrian coast, a stronghold of the Assad clan’s Alawite minority.

In the city of Hama, the site of a 1982 massacre by the army, rebels cheered earlier this week as they brought down a statue of Assad as they seized the city.

Young men celebrated the rebels’ takeover of Hama, yelling “freedom for eternity”.

Fighters there also paraded down one of the city’s wide streets in vehicles that appeared to be stained completely brown from desert dust, past a building bearing a mural of Bashar al-Assad.

Published in Dawn, December 9th, 2024