‘Fantastic sight’
A day earlier than the conferences in Jordan, Syrians had celebrated what they referred to as the “Friday of victory”, with fireworks heralding the autumn of the Assad dynasty.
Celebrations continued into the night time on the primary Friday – the Muslim day of relaxation and prayer – since Assad was ousted.
Umayyad Sq. in Damascus was jammed with automobiles, folks and waving flags as fireworks shot into the air, AFPTV footage confirmed.
Exhilarated crowds chanted, “The Syrian folks is one!”
Within the southern metropolis of Sweida, the heartland of Syria’s Druze minority, Bayan al-Hinnawi, 77, by no means believed he would reside to see such a day.
“It is a great sight. No one may have imagined this might occur”, mentioned Hinnawi, who spent 17 years in jail.
Sunni Muslim HTS is rooted in Syria’s department of Al-Qaeda and is designated a “terrorist” organisation by many Western governments.
However the group has sought to average its rhetoric, and the interim authorities insists the rights of all Syrians might be protected, as will the rule of regulation.
The European Union was searching for “to ascertain contacts” with the brand new rulers quickly, an EU official informed AFP on situation of anonymity.
Inside a lot of the nation, the main focus turned in direction of unravelling the secrets and techniques of Assad’s rule, significantly the community of detention centres and suspected torture websites.
The Worldwide Committee of the Purple Cross mentioned it documented greater than 35,000 disappearances throughout Assad’s rule, with the precise quantity probably far larger.
“We simply desire a trace of the place they had been,” Abu Mohammed informed AFP as he looked for information of three lacking kinfolk on the Mazzeh airbase in Damascus.
Whereas Syrians have a good time the tip of Assad’s brutal rule, they face a wrestle for requirements in a rustic ravaged by struggle, sanctions and runaway inflation.
On Friday, the EU introduced the launch of an “air bridge” operation to ship an preliminary 50 tonnes of well being provides through neighbouring Turkey.
