Gunshots rang out from Mount Qasioun overlooking the capital where hundreds of people gazed up at fireworks, an AFP reporter at the square saw.
It was the first new year's celebration without an Assad in power for more than 50 years after the fall of Bashar Al Assad in December.
"Long live Syria, Assad has fallen," shouted some children.
"We did not expect such a miracle to happen, today the Syrians have found their smile again," Layane el Hijazi, a 22-year-old agricultural engineering student, told AFP from Umayyad Square.
"We were able to obtain our rights, we can now talk. I am letting off steam these last three weeks and tonight by bringing out everything I had buried," she said.
Despite the revelry, soldiers patrolled the streets of Damascus less than a month after Assad's rapid demise.
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