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BREAKING: Assad flees Syria after 24 years in office *Rebels take over poser
The Syrian president, Bashar al-Assad, is believed to have fled the country his family has ruled over for 50 years as rebels said they had captured the capital after a lightning advance completed in just under two weeks.
Two senior Syrian officers told Reuters that Assad had fled Damascus, his destination unknown. The report could not be independently verified.
The senior Emirati diplomat Anwar Gargash declined to say whether Assad was fleeing to the United Arab Emirates.
“When people ask where is Bashar al-Assad going to, I say, you know, when you really look at this, this is really at the end of the day a footnote in history,” he told reporters at a conference in Bahrain.
The Syrian leader had been publicly absent as Islamist militant insurgents spearheaded a sweeping offensive that began in a small enclave in north-western Syria, and within 11 days appeared to have toppled Assad’s rule.
In their first announcement on state television following the offensive that took the world by surprise, rebels said they had ended Assad’s 24-year authoritarian rule.
A group of people were shown at the state television news studio, with one reading a statement from the “Damascus conquest operations room” announcing “the liberation of the city of Damascus and the fall of the tyrant Bashar al-Assad and the release of all the unjustly detained from the regime prisons”, calling on fighters and citizens to safeguard the “property of the free Syrian state”.
Syria’s army command notified officers on Sunday that Assad’s regime had ended, a Syrian officer who was informed of the move told Reuters. But the Syrian army later said it was continuing operations against “terrorist groups” in the towns of Hama and Homs and Deraa countryside.
Rebels said they had freed prisoners from Damascus’s notorious Sednaya prison, regarded as a symbol of the Assad regime’s brutality, while video from Damascus showed a man climbing on top of a hospital sign to tear down a poster of Assad’s face. In the capital’s central square, people climbed on top of tanks and cheered as they trampled on a toppled statue of Assad’s father, Hafez, AFPTV images showed.
In Syria’s second city of Aleppo, claimed by insurgent forces just one week before, celebratory singing broadcast from the speakers of mosques was interspersed with the sound of ululating and cheering ringing out across the rooftops.
The Assad family have ruled Syria since 1971 when Hafez al-Assad seized power in a military coup, before his son Bashar inherited the presidency in 2000. Their control of the country was enforced through a vast security state, crushing dissent through a broad network of detention centres and government surveillance.
Bashar al-Assad suppressed a popular uprising against him in 2011, when Syrians first took to the streets of major cities to demand his overthrow. What began as peaceful demonstrations later spilled over into a civil war that is estimated to have killed more than 300,000 people in 10 years of fighting.
Assad willingly turned the full might of the state on his own people in order to maintain control, including pummelling the civilian population with airstrikes and using chemical weapons including the deadly nerve agent sarin.
“Today is the end of 54 years of the reign of Assad family in Syria. This is the only regime I knew all of my life,” said doctor Zaher Sahloul, a Syrian-American physician who organised medical missions into Syria, including hospitals in Aleppo that were targeted by Syrian and Russian airstrikes.
“I don’t cry often in my adult life but today I did. It has been 14 long years of horror. This is our Berlin Wall moment,” he said.
Intervention from Russia and Iran had allowed Assad to survive almost 14 years of unrest and civil strife, leaving him in charge of a fractured state. His rule over Syria had appeared inevitable, until an insurgent advance led by the group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham began to seize control of major towns along a highway leading to Damascus.
As the insurgency drew closer along the highway that leads to the capital, rebel groups across southern Syria took control of a swath of towns south of Damascus. Armed opposition groups closed in on the capital from three directions as Syrian army officers retreated, or fled. Video from Damascus showed soldiers rapidly changing into civilian clothes on the streets of the capital before dispersing.
The prime minister, Mohammed Ghazi Jalali, said in a video statement that the government was ready to “extend its hand” to the opposition, offering to work with a transitional government.
“I am in my house and I have not left, and this is because of my belonging to this country,” Jalili said, without addressing Assad’s whereabouts.
Promising a “new Syria” in their own statement, the insurgents said: “We turn the page on the dark past, and open a new horizon for the future.”
As armed rebels swept cities across the country, they flung open detention facilities where rights groups estimated that at least 100,000 people were considered missing or forcibly disappeared since 2011 at the hands of the state.
This included the Sednaya military prison, a facility notorious as the site of particularly brutal and humiliating methods of torture. Video circulating online showed tens of people streaming into the streets around the facility, running into the night.
The exiled Syrian human rights defender Ranim Badenjki of the Syria Campaign said she was crying tears of joy at the news of Assad’s departure, as “it’s all too good to be true”.
“We always thought that Assad was lucky, supported by strong allies, and world leaders rushing to shake hands with him. But I’m happy to see that Syrians themselves made this dream come true,” she said.
“I am thinking of everyone we lost in recent years, killed for protesting or writing a post on social media. I think of the people tortured to death because they provided medicine or help to people in need. I think of my grandpa who was tortured by Hafez al-Assad,” she said.
Badenjki said her joy was also tinged with sorrow, fearful to learn the fate of some of the people missing or potentially lost in Syria’s labyrinthine detention facilities.
“I want to be happy – but I also want to see my friend’s father alive. He was forcibly disappeared by the regime 11 years ago. I want to know he is still alive and that he can be released. I want to know the fate of my missing cousin.”
Moayad Hokan, a Syrian analyst living in exile, said the events of the past day were “unbelievable.”
“Just a few months ago all of us were operating under the assumption that this day would never come,” he said. “Every time I say to myself the words the Assad regime has fallen, I still can’t really believe it.”
Culled from The Guardian
Sheriff Oborevwori, Governor of Delta State, Ifeanyi Okowa, his predecessor and all members of the Peoples Democratic Party in the state, on Wednesday emptied into the All Progressives Congress (APC), ending months of speculations about the political development in the oil-rich state.
James Manager, Senator formerly representing Delta South at the National Assembly, who announced the move in Asaba, the state capital, shortly after a meeting that lasted over six hours at Government House, Asaba, said the state could not afford to allow itself drift away.
“All PDP members in the state, including the governor, former Governor Okowa, the Speaker, the state party chairman, all the local government chairmen and others, have agreed to move to the APC. We cannot continue to be in a sinking boat,” he said.
Aniagwu Charles, Delta State Commissioner for Information, who confirmed the development, said the defection, was a collective decision of Delta PDP leaders and stakeholders, adding: “There is a need for us to adjust our drinking patterns. And in adjusting that drinking pattern, we needed to make a decision that would further help to cement the development in our state, to build the court of law that has existed in our state, to further advance the cause of security and the welfare of our people, and, to a large extent, ensure that development in Delta is not truncated.
“In taking that decision, we concluded that leaving the PDP was very necessary for us to be able to collaborate and build a state that every Deltan will be proud of. We believe that what is happening, and the state of the PDP, is akin to that palm wine whose taste has changed — and there was a need for us to change the drinking party. By the grace of God, on Monday next week, we will be able to make a very big statement confirming that we are moving into the APC.”
Agbede community in Etsako West local government area of Edo State, rose in protests on Wednesday, complaining of continued kidnapping and killing by Fulani herdsmen, who they say have taken over their bushes and those of the surrounding neighbours.
Accusing the alleged marauders of killing and maiming those who could not pay ransom, as well as raping women and dislodging farmers from their farmlands, the community, who took to the streets in demonstrations, lamented that help had refused to come from anywhere including security agencies.
Agbede, and surrounding villages, including Odighie, Egono and Awain, they said, had been under siege in the past two months while efforts to get the assistance of the police in the area had ended in futilities, accusing them of complicity, with senior police officers from the northern part of the country covering up the criminals.
“Farm destruction, killings, rapes, and kidnappings for ransom have become disturbingly common and the police, instead of protecting the communities, they seem to be aiding and abetting the Fulani herders against the aborigines.
“The DPO at the Agbede Police Station, the Police Area Command in Auchi, and the Zone Five Office in Benin are not helping matters as we are suspecting them to be backing the herders with lining orders which is now creating fear amongst the people over their genuine protection and safety.”
Vanguard quoted a member of the community who did not want his name on the print as accusing the police of using blackmail, harassment, and detention to intimidate vigilantes and hunters who dare to challenge the Fulani invaders, while forcing the locals to sign undertakings not to confront the herders.
Still maintaining the allegation, he also claimed that those arrested in connection with the atrocities were usually promptly released within a few hours of arrest, adding: “Mamudu Momoh was attacked on his farm after he met some herdsmen taking over the farms, uprooting his cassava to feed their cows and in the process, he was attacked and injured.
“He went to the Agbede Police Division to report the case. The case was later turned against him, he was arrested and taken to Zone 5, where he was detained, and the community spent a lot of money to secure his release.
“There is another farmer in the community, Idris, who has been kidnapped by the herdsmen for over a month now and ransom has been paid, the man is yet to be released up till today. We are asking the inspector general of police to withdraw the DPO of the Agbede Police division who is a Northerner without which the Agbede community will never know peace in the hands of the herdsmen who are everywhere in our bush claiming to be hunters.
However Moses Yamu, Chief Superintendent of Police, and spokesman of the Edo State Police Command, was quoted as debunking the allegations, saying that the officers and men of Agbede Police division have been working round the clock to deal with the herdsmen situation in the area.
Narrating how the police from the division, with a backup from Auchi Area command, had already arrested over 10 suspected kidnappers in that axis who were currently being investigated, he said the community were not fair to the police in their protest, especially to the zone 5 Command.
He was quoted as saying particularly that the protest coming less than two weeks after the Inspector General (AIG) in charge of the zone had just assumed duties, was not a good welcome package by the community for him, especially with the allegation of abetting the said crimes.
What Benue State needs now is to secure its boarders with its neighbours and to assist it in flush out Fulani herdsmen and bandits from the land they have taken over after chasing away the original owners, who are now in various Internally Displaced Persons (IDP’s) camps.
Hyacinth Alia, Governor of the state, declared this stance on Wednesday, while appearing as a guest on The Morning Show, the breakfast programme on ARISE NEWS Network.
The governor, who spoke on a range of issues regarding the attacks with close to 100 persons slaughtered by invading armed groups, he identified as Fulanis from foreign lands, Alia, a Reverend Father of the Catholic Church faith, rejected the idea of imposing state of emergency in the state, saying what the people of needed at the moment was help from the Federal Government.
Stating how he was able to contain the activities of the killers in the state from 17 to just six local government areas, he said his administration had the capability to end the killings, if only it could get the needed support to further deal with the situation.
He said: “What we need is emergency help for now. We need absolute support. The federal government is supported. They sent two armoured tanks that came in. Our situation had changed. We had a better narrative, but what we need to do is to get our people back home, to drive out the invaders, the armed invaders who have brought in people who do not even speak the Nigerian languages we speak. Let them move back to wherever they came from and allow us farmers to go back to our ancestral land. Calling for any emergency does not occur here.”
Dismissing the contention that the situation had overwhelmed him, he said his ability to scale down the spread of the attacks, was indicative that he had the capacity to tackle the incessant killings and destruction of properties in the state by killer herders, some of whom he believes are not Nigerians.
“We couldn’t have trimmed it from 17 local governments in the front lines of the attacks to nine and then now to six, which means we have the capability to do this, but we need help. And that is a fact,” he added.
BREAKING: Entire PDP structure in Delta empties into APC
Edo community in protest: Fulanis still killing, raping, destroying our farms
Benue: Alia wants Fulani chased out from seized land, rejects emergency rule
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