Syrian state television announced that Bashar al-Assad had been ousted from power and that all regime prisoners had been released from Sednaya prison, AA reported.
The opposition claims that Assad has already left Damascus, and other independent sources have confirmed this. The Syrian president boarded a plane and left Damascus for an unknown destination, Reuters reported, citing two senior Syrian officials.
The Arab Socialist Party came to power in Syria in 1963 through a coup. In 1970, Bashar al-Assad’s father, Hafez, took control of the party in a coup, and in 1971 became president. Bashar al-Assad took power in 2000, after his father’s death.
Syria has been the scene of a civil war since 2011, and the fighting has intensified again since late November, when anti-regime groups took control of Aleppo. They then took control of all of Idlib, and then Hama.
