DISBELIEF TURNS TO ELATION

On the streets of Damascus, residents were in a daze as they tried to absorb Bashar al-Assad's dramatic downfall after a lightning offensive by rebel forces that swept through Syria in just 11 days

- William Christou

THE ROAD TO DAMASCUS was lined with discarded army uniforms. In a panic, Syrian army soldiers stripped down in the streets in the early hours of last Sunday morning, realising their leader, Bashar al-Assad, had abandoned them after 54 years of his family's rule over Syria.

Syrian army tanks, which were supposed to stop the lightning rebel offensive that started just 11 days earlier, stood empty in front of checkpoints with posters of the late leader Hafez al-Assad, his face half torn.

Out of habit, a driver stopped and rolled down the window, but there was no one at the checkpoint. "No more checkpoints, no more bribes," Mohammed remarked, smiling as he sped towards the Syrian capital city.

Damascus was still in a state of disbelief, smoke from battles the night before hung over the city like a fog.

Windows shook from the occasional explosion, the target and the warring party unknown. Just hours before, it was announced that Assad had fled the capital and that his regime had fallen.

Syria erupted into the deadliest war of the 21st century, complicated by the interests of foreign powers, when the Assad regime began a brutal crackdown on peaceful pro-democracy Arab spring protests in 2011.

Assad was saved by his Iranian and Russian allies, as well as the Lebanese group Hezbollah, from the advance of rebel forces backed by Qatar and Turkey in 2015, forcing the opposition to withdraw to the northwest of the country.

The Assad axis and the Kurdish-led, US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces, based in the north-east, fought to defeat Islamic State's (IS) self-declared caliphate between 2014 and 2019, yet another theatre in the war that dragged in neighbouring Iraq.

At least 300,000 people have been killed and 100,000 disappeared since 2011. Half the country - about 12 million people - have been displaced from their homes, with about 5.4 million seeking shelter abroad.