photo caption, Rebel factions managed to take control of the city of Aleppo, the second largest city in Syria, on 30 November.Item information
- Author,David Gritten
- author title, BBC news
- December 8,2024
Updated 9 hours
Syria was ruled by the Al Assad family for 53 years with an iron fist. Now that has come to an end.
president Bashar al Assad came to power in 2000, after his father ruled for nearly three decades.
Syrian rebel forces entered Damascus last Sunday after learning that the president had left the country after 13 years of civil war.
Russian state media,citing a Kremlin source,confirmed that Al assad and his family are in Moscow,where thay have been granted asylum.
A peaceful pro-democracy demonstration against Al Assad in 2011 turned into a full-scale civil war that destroyed the country and involved regional and world powers.
More than half a million people died and 12 million were forced to flee their homes, of which around five million are refugees or asylum seekers abroad.
Though, large areas of the country were still outside the government’s control. These included northern and eastern areas controlled by an alliance of Kurdish-led armed groups backed by the United States and the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF).
The last stronghold of the rebels was in the provinces of Aleppo and Idlib,which is on the border with Turkey and where more than four million people lived,and many of them were displaced.
Turkish-backed rebel factions, known as the Syrian National Army (SNA), also controlled territory there backed by Turkish troops.
2.What is Hayat Tahrir al Sham?
The Islamic militant group was created in 2012 under another name, Nusra Front, and pledged allegiance to al Qaeda the following year.
the Nusra Front was considered one of the most effective and deadly groups against President Al Assad, but the jihadist ideology seemed to be its driving force rather than its revolutionary zeal, and at the time it was believed that conflict with the main coalition known as the Free Syrian Army.
In 2016, thatl Nusra broke ties with al Qaeda and took the name Hayat Tahrir al Sham when it merged with other factions a year later.
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photo caption, On Sunday there was a celebration in the streets of Damascus.
However, the United Nations, the United States, the United Kingdom and some other countries continue to consider HTS an affiliate of al Qaeda and often refer to that group as the al Nusra front.
The United States has labeled the group’s leader, Abu Mohammed al Jawlani, a global terrorist specially named and offered a US$10 million reward for information leading to him.
HTS has consolidated its power in Idlib and Aleppo provinces by suppressing rivals, including al Qaeda cells and the Islamic State (IS) extremist group. He established the so-called Salvation Government of Syria to administer the territory according to Islamic law.
Al Jawlani said in an interview with CNN on Friday that “the goal of the revolution is still to overthrow this regime” and that he planned to create a government based on institutions and a “council elected by the people”.
3.Why did the rebels launch an offensive?
For several years, Idlib remained a battleground as Syrian government forces sought to regain control.
On November 27, HTS and its allies said they had launched an offensive to “deter aggression”, accusing the government and allied militias backed by Iran of increasing attacks on civilians in the northwest.