Damascus, Syria CNN — At Umayyad Square in central Damascus, tens of thousands of people had the party of a lifetime on Friday. Rebel fighters declared Damacus “liberated” in a video statement on state television, sending Syrian President Bashar al-Assad fleeing to Russia. Friday’s huge crowds started gathering at the square after midday prayers at the historical Umayyad Mosque in …
Syrians chant slogans and wave rebel flags as they gather for Friday prayers at the Umayyad Mosque in Damascus on Friday. “And then after we will work to build this country and as I said in the beginning, we will be victorious by the help of God.” Huge crowds, including some insurgent fighters, packed Damascus’ historic Umayyad Mosque in the …
CNN — Abu Mohammad al-Jolani’s road to Damascus has been long. It is no surprise that the Islamist rebel chose Damascus’s venerated Umayyad Mosque – not a TV studio, nor newly absented presidential palace, but a place of towering religious significance, which at 1,300 years old is one of the world’s most ancient mosques – to deliver that message. “This …
CNN — President Joe Biden on Sunday called the extraordinary fall of the Assad regime in Syria “a moment of risk” and “historic opportunity” while offering a blueprint for how the US plans to support the region. “The United States will do whatever we can to support them, including through humanitarian relief, to help restore Syria after more than a …
Al-Julani speaks from Damascus’s historic Ummayad Mosque, tells Syrians that building a new country will be ‘hard work’. The leader of the main Syrian opposition armed group that seized Syria’s capital, Abu Mohammed al-Julani, has said the Syrian people are the “rightful owners” of the country after the ouster of President Bashar al-Assad, and declared a “new history” has been …
