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ADDS EU official, Turkish FM
Syrians celebrated on Friday the fall of former president Bashar al-Assad, as the country’s new Islamist-led rulers faced massive challenges amid uncertainty about the future of the multi-ethnic, multi-confessional country.
Assad fled on Sunday after a lightning offensive spearheaded by the Islamist Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) group, ending five decades of repressive rule by his clan.
The rebel-appointed transitional government now faces the huge logistical challenge of keeping services running, after nearly 14 years of war that killed more than 500,000 people and displaced millions.
Here are some key developments from the past 24 hours.
Thousands of Syrians rallied in cities across Syria to celebrate Assad’s ouster, marking the first Friday — the Muslim day of rest and prayer — since his overthrow.
HTS leader Abu Mohammed al-Jolani had called on all Syrians “to go to the streets to express their joy” on Friday to mark “the victory of the blessed revolution”.
During the early days of Syria’s uprising in 2011, pro-democracy protesters gave their Friday gatherings a different name every week — this one was called the “Friday of victory”.
Interim prime minister Mohammed al-Bashir addressed a large congregation at Damascus’s landmark Umayyad Mosque.
One resident, 23-year-old Omar al-Khaled, said in Damascus: “We hope that Syria will head towards a better future.”
Attention has now turned to the many people who were killed, detained or disappeared under the Assad clan’s long, brutal rule.
At the core of the system Assad inherited from his father Hafez was a complex of prisons and detention centres used to eliminate dissent.
The International Committee of the Red Cross said on Friday it has documented more than 35,000 cases of disappearances, adding the true number was likely far higher.
Syria’s leadership said it is willing to cooperate with Washington in the search for US citizens who disappeared under Assad’s rule, including US journalist Austin Tice, abducted in 2012.
Another American, Travis Timmerman, has already been located alive.
The European Union was seeking “to establish contacts” with Syria’s new rulers in the near future, an EU official told AFP on condition of anonymity.
The official said that among the EU’s demands were that the new powers in Damascus protect minorities, form an inclusive transition and shun “terrorism”.
European countries are wrestling with their approach to Syria’s new leadership, with HTS sanctioned by the EU and labelled a “terrorist” group by Western powers.
Turkey said Friday it had urged Russia and Iran not to intervene militarily as the rebel forces pressed the offensive against Assad, a close ally of both Moscow and Tehran.
“The most important thing was to talk to the Russians and Iranians to ensure that they didn’t enter the equation militarily,” Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan said in an interview with Turkey’s private NTV television.
“We had meetings with the Russians and Iranians and they understood.”
Israel, which has launched hundreds of strikes against Syrian military sites since Sunday, has also sent troops in to a UN-patrolled buffer zone that is supposed to separate Israeli and Syrian forces on the Golan Heights.
The move drew international condemnation, with the UN saying it violated a 1974 armistice. Israel’s close ally and top arms supplier the United States has said it was consistent with Israel’s right to self-defence.
Israeli troops have now been ordered to “prepare to remain” in the buffer zone throughout the winter, Defence Minister Israel Katz’s office said on Friday.
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