Ousted Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad deliberate to maintain preventing insurgent forces within the nation earlier than Russia evacuated him, in keeping with an announcement attributed to him launched Monday.
“My departure from Syria was neither deliberate nor did it happen through the closing hours of the battles,” Assad, 59, stated on his Telegram account.
Assad stated he remained in Damascus till the early hours of Dec. 8 — the day the rebels entered Syria’s capital.
Assad stated that as insurgent forces swept via town, he moved north to Lattakia in coordination with Russian allies “to supervise fight operations.” It was on the close by Hmeimim air base when “it grew to become clear that our forces had fully withdrawn from all battle traces and that the final military positions had fallen.”
Assad stated that with no viable technique of leaving the bottom, which he stated had come underneath intensified drone strikes, Moscow requested an instantaneous evacuation to Russia that night.
“This came about a day after the autumn of Damascus,” he stated. NBC News was not capable of independently confirm his account of occasions.
Assad maintained that previous to that time, he had not thought-about “stepping down or in search of refuge.”
Assad was attempting to convey that he had no intention of escaping the nation, in keeping with Burcu Ozcelik, a senior analysis fellow on the London-based suppose tank Royal United Services Institute.
“It was a form of sudden escape given the ‘terrorist offensive,’ as he calls it and as he has at all times known as it, branding the opposition, any opposition, whether or not it is (Hayat Tahrir al-Sham) or not as terrorist factions enforced by exterior influences,” she stated.
Syrians throughout the nation celebrated as 1000’s of individuals held in Assad’s infamous prisons have been launched by insurgent forces led by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, or HTS, after his regime fell. And the celebrations have continued within the days since, with mass rallies demonstrations throughout Syria on Friday marking the top to the Assad household’s 50 years of brutal rule.
Ozcelik stated that whereas Assad’s “affect is in tatters,” it stays that “quite than being dropped at justice, he in shadows in Russia” and capable of talk with regime loyalists in Syria.
HTS and Syrian de facto chief Abu Mohammad al-Jolani, a former Al Qaeda fighter, has sought to challenge a extra average picture and has vowed to rebuild a Syria inclusive of the religions and ethnic teams that represent the nation.
But HTS stays a globally designated terrorist group, with the United States holding a $10 million bounty over Jolani’s head, although the Biden administration has stated it’s weighing whether or not to take away HTS from its listing of terrorist organizations.
President Joe Biden was one in every of many world leaders to welcome Assad’s fall, however he additionally known as for warning at a “second of danger and uncertainty as all of us flip to the query of what comes subsequent.”
Gabrielle Nolin and Raf Sanchez contributed.