4 days ago
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Bashar al-Assad has "stepped down" arsenic president and "left Syria", his state Russia says, hours aft rebel forces took power of the superior Damascus.
The Russian overseas ministry gave nary further details astir Assad's whereabouts, but it was the archetypal authoritative connection saying helium had fled the country.
Assad has not been pictured since helium met Iranian overseas curate successful Damascus a week ago. That day, helium vowed to "crush" the rebels seizing territory with dizzying speed.
Early connected Sunday morning, aft their fighters entered the metropolis without resistance, the Islamist militant radical Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) and its allies declared that "the tyrant Bashar al-Assad has fled".
The caput of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR), a UK-based monitoring group, besides reported that a level believed to beryllium carrying Assad "left Syria via Damascus planetary airdrome earlier the service information forces left" the facility. Rami Abdul Rahman said helium had accusation that the level was meant to instrumentality disconnected astatine 22:00 (20:00 GMT) connected Saturday.
The Flightradar24 website did not grounds a departure astir that time, though a Cham Wings Airlines Airbus A320 rider level did permission astatine astir 00:56 connected Sunday bound for Sharjah successful the United Arab Emirates (UAE).
The level landed successful Sharjah connected time. But a diplomatic advisor to the president of the United Arab Emirates told reporters successful Bahrain that helium did not cognize if Assad was successful the UAE.
Reuters quality bureau meantime cited 2 unnamed elder Syrian service officers arsenic saying that Assad had boarded a Syrian Air plane astatine Damascus airdrome aboriginal connected Sunday.
According to information from Flightradar24, the level initially flew eastbound distant from the superior earlier turning to the north-west and heading towards the Mediterranean coast, which is simply a stronghold of Assad's Alawite sect and is besides location to Russian naval and aerial bases.
After flying implicit the cardinal metropolis of Homs - which fell to the rebels connected Saturday nighttime - astatine an altitude of 20,000ft (6,095m) the level made a U-turn and started flying eastwards again portion besides losing altitude.
The plane's transponder awesome was mislaid astatine astir 04:39 (02:39 GMT), erstwhile it was astir 13km (8 miles) westbound of Homs and flying astatine an altitude 1,625ft (495m).
Flightradar24 said successful a station connected X that the craft "was aged with an older transponder generation, truthful immoderate information mightiness beryllium atrocious oregon missing", that it was "flying successful an country of GPS jamming, truthful immoderate information mightiness beryllium bad", and that determination was not alert of immoderate airports successful the country wherever the awesome was lost.
There person not been immoderate reports of a level clang successful the aforesaid area.
English (US)