ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - The Syrian army has begun retreating from areas inside Damascus, consolidating their positions in the north of the city as rebels close in on the capital, the head of a conflict monitor told Rudaw on Saturday, predicting that Assad family rule is taking its final breaths.
Rebel forces “who reached the outskirts of Damascus are local gunmen from reconciliation groups, and they have taken control of towns, cities, and suburbs of Damascus,” said Rami Abdulrahman, head of the United Kingdom-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.
With rebel forces in the capital, the army has pulled back. “There was a retreat from the army, the regime forces, even from inside Damascus in the direction of northern Damascus,” he added, saying this signifies the end of the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.
“Things are over… Right now, Bashar al-Assad exists for hours, or for days. But today we can say that 53 years of Baathist rule and the rule of the Assads is over,” he said.
The Syrian presidency on Saturday denied that Assad had left Damascus.
Syria’s civil war dramatically reignited late last month when a coalition of rebels led by the Islamist Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) launched a blistering offensive against the Syrian army. They quickly took control of the northern city of Aleppo, the largest in the country, and then advanced to capture the strategic central province of Hama. They also took control of Daraa city late on Friday.
Abdulrahman said he hopes that Assad leaves sooner than later so that the “bloodshed of the Syrian people stops.”
He said that Assad has tried to ignite infighting among Syrians by inciting fear within the Alawite community that rebels will start targeting them. Assad is an Alawite. He has been in power since 2000, taking over when his father Hafez died.
As the HTS-led rebels have pushed south to Damascus, the Syrian army has withdrawn from multiple locations. In the east, Kurdish forces have moved in to occupy the security vacuum and prevent a resurgence of the Islamic State (ISIS). They are now in control of approximately 40 percent of Syria, including the strategic al-Bukamal border crossing into Iraq.
Turkey-backed armed groups have also tried to gain ground, targeting Kurdish forces and pushing them out of the Shahba area in northern Aleppo.
Abdulrhaman said that is a concern. “We also fear the conspiracies of the Turkish state against the Kurds, which tries to create Arab-Kurdish sedition on Syrian soil,” he said.
Syria’s civil war began in 2011. Hundreds of thousands of people have been killed and millions have been forced to flee their homes.
