Syrian rebels reach Damascus suburbs – rebel commander
Syrian insurgents have reached the suburbs of Damascus, opposition activists and a rebel commander said on Saturday, as a rapidly moving offensive in which they have taken over some of Syria’s largest cities continued.
Rami Abdurrahman, who heads the UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, an opposition war monitor, said insurgents were active in the Damascus suburbs of Maadamiyah, Jaramana and Daraya.
He said opposition fighters were also marching from eastern Syria towards the Damascus suburb of Harasta.
Hassan Abdul-Ghani, an insurgent commander, posted on Telegram that opposition forces had started to encircle Damascus in the “final stage” of their offensive. He said fighters were heading from southern Syria towards Damascus.
We will bring you live updates on this developing story.
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The UN’s resident and humanitarian coordinator for Syria, Adam Abdelmoula, released the following statement:
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n
Recent rumors suggesting that the United Nations is evacuating all staff from Syria are false. The United Nations remains steadfast in its commitment to stay and deliver life-saving assistance to the people of Syria during this critical time.
n
To ensure the safety of our personnel while maintaining essential operations, the UN is strategically reducing its footprint by relocating non-critical staff outside the country. This is a precautionary measure to protect our teams amid evolving circumstances. Let me emphasize – this is not an evacuation and our dedication to supporting the people of Syria remains unwavering.
n
The humanitarian situation continues to deteriorate. Hostilities have displaced over 370,000 individuals, with many seeking refuge in the northeast and others trapped in front-line areas, unable to escape. Civilian casualties, including women and children, continue to rise, underscoring the urgent need for coordinated humanitarian action.
n
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Syria’s interior minister told state TV that security forces had imposed an impenetrable cordon around Damascus on Saturday, as fighters opposing the government said they were nearing the capital, Agence France-Presse reports.
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“There is a very strong security and military cordon on the far edges of Damascus and its countryside, and no one … can penetrate this defensive line that we, the armed forces, are building,” Mohammed al-Rahmoun told state TV from Damascus.
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At least 30 Palestinians were killed in Israeli airstrikes on Gaza on Saturday, according to local health officials.
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Qatar expressed hope for renewed efforts toward a ceasefire deal between Israel and Hamas.
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Palestinian health officials, which does not distinguish between civilians and militants in its daily death tolls, said that dozens more people were injured across the enclave.
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A Homs resident as well as army and rebel sources told the news agency that the insurgents had breached government defenses from the north and east of the city.
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A rebel commander said they had taken control of an army camp and villages outside the city.
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The Syrian military, which had sent large numbers of reinforcements to defend the key central city of Homs, did not immediately respond to Reuters’ request for comments on the reports.
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Insurgents have seized almost the entire south-west within 24 hours, and have advanced to within 30km (20 miles) of Damascus.
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The Israeli military said it is helping United Nations forces to head off an attack on a UN position in Syria close to the Israeli border, the Associated Press is reporting.
n The army said in a statement on Saturday that an attack was carried out by “armed individuals” on a UN post near the Syrian town of Hader and it was “assisting UN forces in repelling the attack”.
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The video released on Saturday shows a man who introduces himself as the 24-year-old Matan Zangauker. He can be seen pleading with the Israeli leaders to make a deal that would bring captives being held by Hamas in Gaza back to Israel.
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Nearly 100 hostages, both dead and alive, are believed to be held by Hamas in Gaza since the 7 October 2023 raid by the group.
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After Israel signed a landmark ceasefire deal with Hezbollah in Lebanon last month, mediating countries see increased momentum for a possible deal that could allow the hostages to be released in exchange for scores of Palestinian prisoners.
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President-elect Donald Trump said on Saturday the US should not be involved in the conflict in Syria, where rebel forces are threatening the government of president Bashar al-Assad.
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“Syria is a mess, but is not our friend, & THE UNITED STATES SHOULD HAVE NOTHING TO DO WITH IT. THIS IS NOT OUR FIGHT. LET IT PLAY OUT. DO NOT GET INVOLVED!” Trump said in a post on his social media platform Truth Social.
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Syria’s president, Bashar al-Assad, remains in Damascus and is carrying out his work from the capital, the Syrian state news agency said on Saturday.
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Anti-government protesters toppled a statue of Assad’s late father, Hafez, in the mostly Druze and Christian Damascus suburb of Jaramana earlier on Saturday, witnesses told Agence France-Presse.
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A witness said he he had seen dozens of protesters tearing down the statue in a main square in Jaramana, which bears the former president’s name. Another witness said the statue had been broken up when he went to the square later. Video footage circulating online and verified by AFP showed young men toppling the statue and chanting anti-Assad slogans.
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Syrian insurgents have reached the suburbs of Damascus, opposition activists and a rebel commander said on Saturday, as a rapidly moving offensive in which they have taken over some of Syria’s largest cities continued.
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Rami Abdurrahman, who heads the UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, an opposition war monitor, said insurgents were active in the Damascus suburbs of Maadamiyah, Jaramana and Daraya.
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He said opposition fighters were also marching from eastern Syria towards the Damascus suburb of Harasta.
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Hassan Abdul-Ghani, an insurgent commander, posted on Telegram that opposition forces had started to encircle Damascus in the “final stage” of their offensive. He said fighters were heading from southern Syria towards Damascus.
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We will bring you live updates on this developing story.
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Key events
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Panic gripped Damascus after fast-advancing rebels announced the start of operations to encircle Syria’s capital, prompting many to rush to secure essential supplies.
Residents spoke to Agence France-Presse of a state of panic as traffic jams clogged central Damascus and people sought supplies and queued to withdraw money from ATM machines.
Damascus resident Mohammed, 35, told the news agency he felt “a mix of shock, fear and worry about the future”.
“Nothing compares to what we’re going through today. But I think we’re witnessing days that will go down in history,” he added.
Robert Mackey
Syrian activists and journalists, including the freelance reporter Thomas van Linge, are sharing video of Assad banners being taken down in Douma, just east of Damascus, where there was a deadly chemical attack in 2018 during a government offensive.
Last year, the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) concluded in its third report on Douma that “there are reasonable grounds to believe that the Syrian Arab Air Forces were the perpetrators of the chemical weapons attack on 7 April 2018.”
Rawan Shaif, an open-source investigator at Amnesty International, shared one video clip said to habe been recorded in Douma tonight with the observation: “Chemical weapons have long been used by Assad to break the will of the people. Douma, scarred by that day, has not known freedom since.
Justice is not just about punishment—it’s about giving survivors and families the opportunity to be heard and to be recognised, its the least that they deserve. It’s about holding perpetrators accountable, ensuring these crimes are not forgotten.
Douma may have been broken in April 2018, but it has not been forgotten. Perhaps now, it can be free once again.”
According to Charles Lister from the Middle East Institute, the main rebel group, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, issued a statement declaring its “full readiness to cooperate with the international community in.. monitoring weapons & sensitive sites.”
Ruth Michaelson
When Islamist militants swept into her home town of Aleppo little over a week ago, Rama Alhalabi sheltered indoors as fear engulfed her.
Forces loyal to president Bashar al-Assad, who had sought to reassure residents that nothing was happening, suddenly deserted the city. But as the insurgency pushed south, rapidly seizing control of the city of Hama on the road to Damascus, Alhalabi’s fears about life under militia rule have slowly ebbed. Instead they have been replaced by fears that her friends in the army will be abandoned by their commanding officers as Assad’s regime loses its grip.
“People in Aleppo are feeling more comfortable now we’re further from the areas under the regime’s control,” said the 29-year-old, while still using a pseudonym in fear Assad could retake the city.
“At the same time, I have many friends serving in the army and I don’t want them to get hurt. People with power inside the regime will protect themselves, and they will leave the poor fighters who were forced to join the army to face their awful fate alone.
“Things changed insanely fast,” she added. “We can barely believe what’s happening.”
As militants spearheaded by the group Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) massed outside the city of Homs and rebel forces said they had entered the vast southern suburbs of the capital, rapid change swept across Syria.
The Syrian army declared it had “redeployed”, its forces in two restive provinces south of Damascus in the latest thinly veiled message of retreat, days after they withdrew from Hama. In under a week, five provincial capitals across the country were suddenly no longer under Assad’s control.
Read more on the unprecedented events in Syria:
UN in Syria denies rumours it is evacuating all staff from country
Ruth Michaelson
The UN in Syria denied rumours that it is evacuating all staff from the country, but confirmed that it is “strategically reducing its footprint by relocating non-critical staff outside the country”, as insurgents get closer to the centre of Damascus.
The UN’s resident and humanitarian coordinator for Syria, Adam Abdelmoula, released the following statement:
Recent rumors suggesting that the United Nations is evacuating all staff from Syria are false. The United Nations remains steadfast in its commitment to stay and deliver life-saving assistance to the people of Syria during this critical time.
To ensure the safety of our personnel while maintaining essential operations, the UN is strategically reducing its footprint by relocating non-critical staff outside the country. This is a precautionary measure to protect our teams amid evolving circumstances. Let me emphasize – this is not an evacuation and our dedication to supporting the people of Syria remains unwavering.
The humanitarian situation continues to deteriorate. Hostilities have displaced over 370,000 individuals, with many seeking refuge in the northeast and others trapped in front-line areas, unable to escape. Civilian casualties, including women and children, continue to rise, underscoring the urgent need for coordinated humanitarian action.
More footage has been released of protesters pulling down a statue of Hafez al-Assad in Jaramana’s southern suburbs.
The main rebel group, the Islamist Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham, said it had a duty to protect governmental, international and UN offices in Syria.
Around 2,000 Syrian soldiers crossed the border into Iraq to seek sanctuary, the mayor of Iraqi border town al-Qaem said.
For the latest footage, journalist Rami Jarrah is posting clips of unfolding developments on his Bluesky feed.
Ruth Michaelson
Syria’s regional allies and even some of its opponents are hoping to slow fast-moving events in Damascus “in order to keep the country and its institutions together”, and fearing the state’s total collapse, said former Syrian diplomat Bassam Barabandi.
“No one wants a power vacuum in Damascus – they don’t want to see a situation like the fall of Kabul again,” he said. Even Syria’s northern neighbour, Turkey, feared instability in Damascus, he added, despite president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s cautious statements of support for change.
News from Doha of urgent talks between Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov, Iranian foreign minister Abbas Araghchi and Turkish foreign minister Hakan Fidan was unlikely to comfort Assad. The three countries agreed that there should be a halt to the fighting, but Assad’s longtime backers Russia and Iran publicly voiced a need for talks between the Syrian leader and opposition, a shift away from their previous positions of total support for his rule.
“The most important thing is to start political talks between the Syrian government and legitimate opposition groups,” said Araghchi.
Barabandi believes that Bashar al-Assad, isolated in Damascus, is likely obsessing over how to react to the mass uprising against his rule in a way that differentiates him from the legacy of his father, Hafez al-Assad, using new tactics to crush dissent that neither president has tried.
The younger Assad has previously turned the state’s weapons against his own people, including using the chemical nerve agent sarin on people in the Damascus suburbs in 2013, killing 1,400 people.
The fight for Damascus “will be make or break” for Assad, said Barabandi. “At the same time, things on the street are moving so fast that we don’t know what the options will be. There are a lot of moving parts, it’s hard to say the end game.”
The Syrian presidency issued a statement earlier this afternoon in an attempt to quash rumours that Assad had fled, and said he remained at work “in Damascus”. Barabandi was skeptical that Assad would remain in Damascus should the threats to his rule continue to mount.
He added: “For sure, Assad is out, there will be a new Syria. But now the discussions are what kind of new Syria, who will shape it, who will steer it. I think this is where we are now.”
Saydnaya prison, located about 30km north of Damascus, sits within close reach of fighters opposing the Syrian government.
The prison, which holds thousands of critics of the regime, has been the subject of reports accusing Syrian authorities of systematically and secretly killing detainees.
In 2017, Amnesty International documented acts of murder, torture, enforced disappearance and extermination at Saydnaya since 2011, calling the violations “crimes against humanity”.
Amid the prison’s inaccessibility to journalists and monitoring groups, Amnesty International and Forensic Architecture met with five survivors in Istanbul in April 2016. The researchers built a 3D model to reconstruct conditions inside the prison using the survivors’ testimonies.
Syrian activist Shakeeb al-Jabri said that “thousands of families eagerly await news of their loved ones”.
Syria minister says ‘very strong’ security cordon around Damascus – state TV
Syria’s interior minister told state TV that security forces had imposed an impenetrable cordon around Damascus on Saturday, as fighters opposing the government said they were nearing the capital, Agence France-Presse reports.
“There is a very strong security and military cordon on the far edges of Damascus and its countryside, and no one … can penetrate this defensive line that we, the armed forces, are building,” Mohammed al-Rahmoun told state TV from Damascus.
At least 30 Palestinians killed in Israeli airstrikes on Gaza on Saturday
At least 30 Palestinians were killed in Israeli airstrikes on Gaza on Saturday, according to local health officials.
Qatar expressed hope for renewed efforts toward a ceasefire deal between Israel and Hamas.
Palestinian health officials, which does not distinguish between civilians and militants in its daily death tolls, said that dozens more people were injured across the enclave.
Syrian rebels enter suburbs of Homs, according to Reuters
A Homs resident as well as army and rebel sources told the news agency that the insurgents had breached government defenses from the north and east of the city.
A rebel commander said they had taken control of an army camp and villages outside the city.
The Syrian military, which had sent large numbers of reinforcements to defend the key central city of Homs, did not immediately respond to Reuters’ request for comments on the reports.
Insurgents have seized almost the entire south-west within 24 hours, and have advanced to within 30km (20 miles) of Damascus.