Fear and protests as Syria rebels advance on Damascus

Panic gripped Damascus after fast-advancing rebels said on Saturday they had begun operations to surround Syria's capital, residents said, with many scrambling to stock up on vital supplies.

Protests spread like wildfire in neighbouring provinces, with anti-government demonstrators toppling statues of late president Hafez al-Assad in the Jaramana suburb of Damascus and in the southern city of Daraa.

Damascus resident Rania, who is in her eighth month of pregnancy, said she could not find desperately needed medicine anywhere as shops and pharmacies had closed early.

"I'm very scared, for me and for my unborn daughter," she told AFP.

"I've been trying to buy medicine since this morning but I cannot find what I need."

Rania said she had to come home empty-handed after her husband demanded that she return.

"The situation was not like this when I left my house this morning... suddenly everyone was scared," she said.

Residents spoke to AFP of a state of panic as traffic jams clogged central Damascus and people sought supplies and queued to withdraw money from ATM machines.

Three residents, who requested anonymity for security reasons, said they struggled to find food or medicines as stores had shut.

Rumours that President Bashar al-Assad had fled the country added to the anxiety, although his office denied the reports and said he was still in Damascus.

Assad last appeared in public on Sunday during an official visit by Iran's Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi.

Key developments as rebel 'circle' capital

Syrian rebels battled government forces for control of the key city of Homs on Saturday and advanced towards the capital as front lines collapsed across the country, throwing President Bashar al-Assad's 24-year rule into the balance.

Since the rebels' sweep into Aleppo a week ago, government defenses have crumbled at dizzying speed as insurgents seized a string of major cities and rose up in places where the rebellion had long seemed over.

The twin threats to strategically vital Homs and the capital Damascus now pose an existential threat to Assad's decades of rule in Syria.

A Homs resident, and army and rebel sources said 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.

Insurgents have advanced to within 30 km (20 miles) of Damascus as government forces fell back, rebels said.

Underscoring the possibility of an uprising in the capital, protesters took to the streets in several Damascus suburbs, ripping up Assad posters and tearing down a statue of his father, former President Hafez al-Assad, uncontested by army or police. Some were joined by soldiers who had changed into civilian clothes and deserted, residents said.

Worst situation for Assad since 2011

The HTS-led alliance's offensive since November 27 represents the most significant threat to President Bashar al-Assad's power in years, after Syria's civil war -- which began with Assad's crackdown on pro-democracy protests in 2011 -- fell mostly dormant.

Assad used Russian and Iranian firepower to beat back rebel forces during years of civil war but never defeated them, leaving him vulnerable when his allies were distracted by wars elsewhere and his enemies went on the march.

The rebels' lightning advance through western Syria marks one of the most serious threats to half a century of Assad family rule in Damascus, and a seismic moment for the Middle East.

This photo shows Syrian rebels in the streets of the northern Syrian city of Aleppo on November 30, 2024. AFP

Statues of Assad's father and brother were toppled in cities taken by the rebels, while pictures of him on billboards and government offices have been torn down, stamped on, burned or riddled with bullets.

The Syrian presidency issued a statement on Saturday denying Assad had left the country and saying he was carrying out his duties in Damascus.

Rebels led by the militant group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham drive on a motorbike in al-Rashideen, Aleppo province, Syria November 29, 2024. Reuters

Assad became president in 2000 after his father Hafez died, preserving the dominance of their Alawite sect in the Sunni Muslim-majority country.

Costly comeback

Shaped in its early years by the Iraq war and crisis in Lebanon, his rule has been defined by the civil war which spiraled out of the 2011 Arab Spring, when Syrians demanding democracy took to the streets, to be met with deadly force.

Branded an "animal" in 2018 by U.S. President Donald Trump for using chemical weapons - an accusation he denied - Assad has outlasted many of the foreign leaders who believed his demise was imminent in the early days of the conflict, when he lost swathes of Syria to rebels.

Displaced people who fled from Aleppo countryside, sit together on the back of a truck in Tabqa, Syria. Reuters

Helped by Russian air strikes and militias supported by Iran, he clawed back much of the lost territory during years of military offensives, including siege warfare condemned as "medieval" by U.N. investigators.

With his opponents largely confined to a corner of northwestern Syria, he presided over several years of relative calm though large parts of the country remained out of his grasp and the economy was shackled by sanctions.

He re-established ties with Arab states that once shunned him but remained a pariah to much of the world.

Assad has not delivered any public remarks since insurgents took Aleppo a week ago but said in a call with Iran's president that the escalation sought to redraw the region for Western interests, echoing his view of the revolt as a foreign-backed conspiracy.