Syrian rebels say they have reached Damascus in ‘final stage’ of offensive – Middle East crisis live

Residents of al-Rukban camp rejoiced on Saturday night, after the Syrian army soldiers which had enforced a more than six-year-long siege on the camp abandoned their positions and fled.

Al-Rukban, a camp formed in 2014 in the arid no man’s land between Syria and Jordan, houses about 10,000 refugees who fled the Syrian government’s crackdown on protesters during the country’s revolution. In 2018, the Syrian army and the Jordanian government imposed a siege on the camp, forcing residents to survive on meager amounts of food brought in periodically by a few smugglers.

“I cannot describe the feelings, the words don’t exist. I will be able to return to my village after 14 years,” said Yasser, a resident of the camp originally from a village outside Homs in central Syria speaking under a pseudonym in case government forces returned. Yasser had read a few hours earlier that the Syrian army had been driven out of his home town by rebels led by the Islamist group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) as part of its attempt to take Homs city.

Pictures sent to the guardian showed Syrian army vehicles, tanks and artillery abandoned where soldiers had fled or had been killed by members of the Free Syrian Army. The Free Syrian Army had patrolled the 55-kilometer demilitarized zone around the camp, supervised by US forces as part of its global coalition to defeat the Islamic State.

On Saturday, the Free Syrian Army had broken out of the demilitarized zone, killing the remaining Syrian army soldiers and capturing the ancient city of Palmyra.

Leaving al-Rukban had been a dream for Yasser and for the other camp residents. Living conditions in the camp had deteriorated in recent years, with food and medical supplies scarce. Syrian soldiers had tightened their siege on the camp, preventing smugglers from reaching the camp. During the last survey of a UN clinic before it closed down in 2020, almost 100% of children under five who went to the clinic were malnourished.

Still, camp residents had to wait before they could return home. The area around the demilitarized zone had been heavily mined, and would take some time to clear.

“We have to wait around 20 days. I will be counting every second,” Yasser said.

As government forces withdraw from cities and towns across Syria, there is a scramble to preserve documents that could be used to hold members of President Bashar al-Assad’s regime to account for crimes against humanity. The Syrian journalist Qusay Noor points to video that appears to show “a huge warehouse of records and reports on citizens in the Political Security Branch” in the city of Suwayda.

But, according to Rim Turkmani, director of the Syria conflict research programme at the London School of Economics: “The notorious State Security branch of Mukhabarat in Homs has evacuated its building, setting tons of documents – evidence of their crimes – ablaze on the roof. Friends in the city witnessed the evacuation from their balconies, and now, many in Homs are overwhelmed with tears of relief and joy.”

“As opposition forces continue to take control of key sites across Syria – central offices, prisons, political, intelligence offices, and military branches – we are witnessing a historical moment in the search for justice!” Rawan Shaif of Amnesty International notes on Bluesky. “These documents are not just pieces of paper – they are the threads that connect us to the past and to the hope for accountability. They hold the potential to expose the full extent of the crimes committed and the perpetrators behind them. They are essential for holding individuals, command, and perpetrators accountable and ensuring that justice is pursued. But the road ahead requires preservation; these materials, these records and accounts, must be safeguarded, archived, and kept secure. Some incredibly emotional times ahead, but the work is just beginning.”

Robert Mackey

Syrian activists and journalists, including the freelance reporter Thomas van Linge, are sharing video of Assad banners being taken down in Douma, just east of Damascus, where there was a deadly chemical attack in 2018 during a government offensive.

Last year, the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) concluded in its third report on Douma that “there are reasonable grounds to believe that the Syrian Arab Air Forces were the perpetrators of the chemical weapons attack on 7 April 2018.”

Rawan Shaif, an open-source investigator at Amnesty International, shared one video clip said to habe been recorded in Douma tonight with the observation: “Chemical weapons have long been used by Assad to break the will of the people. Douma, scarred by that day, has not known freedom since.

Justice is not just about punishment—it’s about giving survivors and families the opportunity to be heard and to be recognised, its the least that they deserve. It’s about holding perpetrators accountable, ensuring these crimes are not forgotten.

Douma may have been broken in April 2018, but it has not been forgotten. Perhaps now, it can be free once again.”

According to Charles Lister from the Middle East Institute, the main rebel group, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, issued a statement declaring its “full readiness to cooperate with the international community in.. monitoring weapons & sensitive sites.”

Ruth Michaelson

When Islamist militants swept into her home town of Aleppo little over a week ago, Rama Alhalabi sheltered indoors as fear engulfed her.

Forces loyal to president Bashar al-Assad, who had sought to reassure residents that nothing was happening, suddenly deserted the city. But as the insurgency pushed south, rapidly seizing control of the city of Hama on the road to Damascus, Alhalabi’s fears about life under militia rule have slowly ebbed. Instead they have been replaced by fears that her friends in the army will be abandoned by their commanding officers as Assad’s regime loses its grip.

“People in Aleppo are feeling more comfortable now we’re further from the areas under the regime’s control,” said the 29-year-old, while still using a pseudonym in fear Assad could retake the city.

“At the same time, I have many friends serving in the army and I don’t want them to get hurt. People with power inside the regime will protect themselves, and they will leave the poor fighters who were forced to join the army to face their awful fate alone.

“Things changed insanely fast,” she added. “We can barely believe what’s happening.”

As militants spearheaded by the group Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) massed outside the city of Homs and rebel forces said they had entered the vast southern suburbs of the capital, rapid change swept across Syria.

The Syrian army declared it had “redeployed”, its forces in two restive provinces south of Damascus in the latest thinly veiled message of retreat, days after they withdrew from Hama. In under a week, five provincial capitals across the country were suddenly no longer under Assad’s control.

Read more on the unprecedented events in Syria:

UN in Syria denies rumours it is evacuating all staff from country

Ruth Michaelson

The UN in Syria denied rumours that it is evacuating all staff from the country, but confirmed that it is “strategically reducing its footprint by relocating non-critical staff outside the country”, as insurgents get closer to the centre of Damascus.

The UN’s resident and humanitarian coordinator for Syria, Adam Abdelmoula, released the following statement:

Recent rumors suggesting that the United Nations is evacuating all staff from Syria are false. The United Nations remains steadfast in its commitment to stay and deliver life-saving assistance to the people of Syria during this critical time.

To ensure the safety of our personnel while maintaining essential operations, the UN is strategically reducing its footprint by relocating non-critical staff outside the country. This is a precautionary measure to protect our teams amid evolving circumstances. Let me emphasize – this is not an evacuation and our dedication to supporting the people of Syria remains unwavering.

The humanitarian situation continues to deteriorate. Hostilities have displaced over 370,000 individuals, with many seeking refuge in the northeast and others trapped in front-line areas, unable to escape. Civilian casualties, including women and children, continue to rise, underscoring the urgent need for coordinated humanitarian action.

Ruth Michaelson

Syria’s regional allies and even some of its opponents are hoping to slow fast-moving events in Damascus “in order to keep the country and its institutions together”, and fearing the state’s total collapse, said former Syrian diplomat Bassam Barabandi.

“No one wants a power vacuum in Damascus – they don’t want to see a situation like the fall of Kabul again,” he said. Even Syria’s northern neighbour, Turkey, feared instability in Damascus, he added, despite president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s cautious statements of support for change.

News from Doha of urgent talks between Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov, Iranian foreign minister Abbas Araghchi and Turkish foreign minister Hakan Fidan was unlikely to comfort Assad. The three countries agreed that there should be a halt to the fighting, but Assad’s longtime backers Russia and Iran publicly voiced a need for talks between the Syrian leader and opposition, a shift away from their previous positions of total support for his rule.

“The most important thing is to start political talks between the Syrian government and legitimate opposition groups,” said Araghchi.

Barabandi believes that Bashar al-Assad, isolated in Damascus, is likely obsessing over how to react to the mass uprising against his rule in a way that differentiates him from the legacy of his father, Hafez al-Assad, using new tactics to crush dissent that neither president has tried.

The younger Assad has previously turned the state’s weapons against his own people, including using the chemical nerve agent sarin on people in the Damascus suburbs in 2013, killing 1,400 people.

The fight for Damascus “will be make or break” for Assad, said Barabandi. “At the same time, things on the street are moving so fast that we don’t know what the options will be. There are a lot of moving parts, it’s hard to say the end game.”

The Syrian presidency issued a statement earlier this afternoon in an attempt to quash rumours that Assad had fled, and said he remained at work “in Damascus”. Barabandi was skeptical that Assad would remain in Damascus should the threats to his rule continue to mount.

He added: “For sure, Assad is out, there will be a new Syria. But now the discussions are what kind of new Syria, who will shape it, who will steer it. I think this is where we are now.”

Syria’s interior minister told state TV that security forces had imposed an impenetrable cordon around Damascus on Saturday, as fighters opposing the government said they were nearing the capital, Agence France-Presse reports.

“There is a very strong security and military cordon on the far edges of Damascus and its countryside, and no one … can penetrate this defensive line that we, the armed forces, are building,” Mohammed al-Rahmoun told state TV from Damascus.

At least 30 Palestinians were killed in Israeli airstrikes on Gaza on Saturday, according to local health officials.

Qatar expressed hope for renewed efforts toward a ceasefire deal between Israel and Hamas.

Palestinian health officials, which does not distinguish between civilians and militants in its daily death tolls, said that dozens more people were injured across the enclave.

A Homs resident as well as army and rebel sources told the news agency that the insurgents had breached government defenses from the north and east of the city.

A rebel commander said they had taken control of an army camp and villages outside the city.

The Syrian military, which had sent large numbers of reinforcements to defend the key central city of Homs, did not immediately respond to Reuters’ request for comments on the reports.

Insurgents have seized almost the entire south-west within 24 hours, and have advanced to within 30km (20 miles) of Damascus.