Syria updates: Celebrations take over Damascus square

Turkey is going to reopen its embassy in Syria's capital Damascus on Saturday, the Turkish news agency Anadolu reported, quoting Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan.

"They [the embassy staff] are on their way as a team. The embassy will start operations tomorrow," Fidan told private broadcaster NTV on Friday, according to Anadolu.

Turkey shut down its embassy in Syria in 2012 due to the worsening conflict during the Syrian civil war. 

After the collapse of the Assad regime, Turkey is now considered the most significant foreign player in Syria.

Friedrich Merz, leader of Germany's center-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and front-runner to be the country's next chancellor, wants stricter controls at European borders to prevent the entry of supporters of the toppled Syrian dictator Bashar Assad.

"We Europeans must now quickly ensure together that the accomplices of the Assad regime from the second and third ranks do not come to Europe and Germany unnoticed as asylum-seekers," Merz told the Rheinische Post newspaper in an interview.

He also called for rejecting people at Germany's borders. "We need a stricter border regime, which we will also enforce after the election," said Merz.

Responding to the question of how to deal with Syrians who came to Germany years ago, Merz said: "There will be many who want to return to their homeland willingly and voluntarily. Many will also stay because they work here and are now German citizens." Those who do not wish to integrate should return when their protection status ceases, he added.

In a video conference, G7 leaders on Friday said they hopef that Syria will have a "peaceful and orderly transition," following the fall of Assad's regime. 

The G7 group, consisting of the US, Canada, France, UK, Germany, Italy and Japan, also called for an "inclusive political process." 

After the G7 virtual meeting, British Prime Minister Keir Starmer urged for caution regarding Syria's future, saying the country required "credible, inclusive and non-sectarian governance on behalf of all Syrians."

"All leaders agreed that Syria's territorial integrity, independence and sovereignty must be respected throughout the transition process and in future," a spokesperson for Starmer added.

Syrians have spent the day celebrating in the streets following the first Friday prayers since the fall of the Bashar Assad regime. Huge crowds crammed into the Umayyad Mosque in the capital Damascus, with the newly installed caretaker prime minister telling worshippers that the country was looking at new beginnings. DW takes a closer look at celebrations.

Qatar will send its first official delegation to Damascus on Sunday to meet Syria's interim government and discuss reopening the Qatari embassy and enhancing humanitarian aid deliveries, according to AFP news agency and Reuters.

"They will take the necessary steps to reopen the embassy and discuss enhancing aid delivery," Reuters quoted an official as saying.

Doha closed its diplomatic mission in Damascus and recalled its ambassador in July 2011 after a peaceful uprising against Bashar Assad's government spiraled into a 13-year civil war.

From the start of the popular uprisings in Syria in 2011, Qatar played a role supporting the opposition to the Assad regime, initially in partnership with two other Gulf countries, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, and Turkey. 

Russia invested a lot of money over the years in Syria to build up and maintain key military sites. Moscow reportedly even used its airbase in Latakia named Hmeimim as a launchpad for some of its operations in Africa. So what happens to them now? DW takes a closer look.

 

The Israeli military said it had seized missiles during its operations in Syria.

Israel sent its forces into a demilitarized zone between the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights and the rest of Syria on Sunday after Syrian rebels ousted Bashar Assad's regime.

Israeli forces took anti-tank missiles and ammunition, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said in a statement.

Israel has carried out over 300 air strikes on Syria since the fall of the Assad regime, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights war monitor.

Earlier on Friday, Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz ordered Israeli forces to "prepare to remain" in the buffer zone over the winter.

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said that he will not call for "well-integrated" Syrians in Germany to return to their country of origin after the fall of Bashar Assad's regime.

"Someone who is well-integrated, speaks German and has an employment contract can feel safe here," Scholz stressed. "We're not going to tell them to quit their job and leave."

"That also applies to Syrians," he said.

Scholz's comments come after Interior Minister Nancy Faeser warned that the fall of Assad could have a negative impact on Germany's labor market, especially in the healthcare sector. Health Minister Karl Lauterbach said that some 6,000 Syrian doctors were working in Germany.

Shortly after the fall of the Assad regime, several figures from the conservative opposition Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) suggested plans encouraging Syrians to return to the Levantine country.

Millions of Syrians fled the country during the civil war that started in 2011 and nearly a million Syrian nationals live in Germany.

Germany halted asylum proceedings for Syrian citizens on Monday.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said the US was determined to make sure "that Daesh cannot re-emerge," referring to the Arabic acronym for the so-called "Islamic State."

The US top diplomat made an unannounced visit to Iraq on Friday, where he met Mohammed Shia al-Sudani to discuss Syria's political transition following the fall of the Assad regime.

He visited the US embassy in Baghdad and told reporters he discussed the situation in Syria with the Iraqi prime minister.

"As Syria transitions from the Assad dictatorship to hopefully a democracy, it does so in a way that, of course, protects all of the minorities in Syria that produces an inclusive, nonsectarian government and does not become, in any way, a platform for terrorism," Blinken said.

"No one knows the importance of that more than Iraq, because of the ongoing presence of ISIS or Daesh in Syria, and
we are determined to make sure that Daesh cannot reemerge," he added. 

Following Iraq, Blinken heads back to Jordan, where he will attend a meeting of Arab and Turkish foreign ministers to discuss Syria. 

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken made an unannounced visit to Iraq for talks with Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani on the future of Syria after the fall of Bashar Assad.

He flew to Iraq from the Turkish capital, Ankara. It comes a day after the US official spoke with Jordanian officials in the Red Sea city of Aqaba.

The State Department said Blinken was to "discuss regional security opportunities and challenges, as well as enduring US support for engagement with all communities in Syria to establish an inclusive transition."

It said Blinken would also "underscore US commitment to the US-Iraq strategic partnership and to Iraq's security, stability and sovereignty."

Tens of thousands of Syrians took to the streets to celebrate nearly a week after a rebel group took the capital, Damascus.

The celebrations coincided with the first Muslim Friday prayers since the fall of dictator Bashar Assad, whose family had ruled the country for over 53 years.

People waved the green, white and black flag associated with the Syrian opposition and used by the new interim government and chanted "God bless Free Syria."

 According to eyewitnesses cited by Germany's DPA news agency, tens of thousands of people gathered at the historic Umayyad Mosque in Damascus' old city.

Rebel leader Ahmed al-Sharaa, also known by his nom de guerre Abu Mohammed al-Golani, gave his victory speech on Sunday from the iconic landmark.

On Friday, al-Sharaa called for Syrians to celebrate the fall of the regime, while calling for "peaceful behavior" and for citizens to refrain from "celebratory gunfire."

The European Commission, the European Union's executive body, said the bloc will soon launch an "air bridge" operation to deliver an initial 50 metric tons (55 US tons) of health supplies to Syria.

The items, taken from EU stockpiles in Dubai in the United Arab Emirates, will be transported by plane to the southern city of Adana in Turkey for distribution in Syria "in the coming days," a Commission statement said. 

A further 46 metric tons of supplies will be sent from a stockpile in Denmark to the Turkish city of Adana, from where they will be distributed in Syria by UNICEF and the World Health Organization.

The Commission has also increased its funding for Syria for this year by €4 million ($4.2 million), bringing total humanitarian support to €163 million in 2024.

"The collapse of the Assad regime offers new hope for the Syrian people. But this moment of change also carries risks and brings hardship. With the situation on the ground so volatile, our help to the people of Syria is ever more important," said European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen.

"We stand with the people of Syria," she added.

Von der Leyen will travel to Turkey on Tuesday to discuss the delivery of humanitarian aid with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

Syrian dictator Bashar Assad told almost no one of his planned flight from Syria to Moscow  as rebels took over Damascus, according to a report from Reuters that draws on numerous interviews with people close to him.

According to one army commander interviewed by Reuters under condition of anonymity, Assad told a meeting of army and security chiefs hours before he left that Russia was going to provide military support and that Syrian ground forces should continue to fight against the rebel offensive.

He also told his presidential office manager on Saturday he was going home after work but instead went to the airport to take a plane out of the country, an aide told Reuters.

Assad didn't even inform his younger brother, Maher, commander of the Army's elite 4th Armored Division, about his
plan to flee, according to three aides. Maher himself flew by helicopter to Iraq and then to Russia, one of the people said.

The former Syrian leader flew to Russia's Hmeimim air base in the coastal city of Latakia in the early hours of Sunday, December 8, and from there on to the Russian capital, where his wife, Asma, and their three children were waiting for him, said several aides and an official. The plane had its transponder turned off to avoid being located.

Later that day, the rebels declared that Damascus was taken, putting an end to Assad's 24-year rule.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken has said it was "imperative" to prevent the so-called "Islamic State" group (IS) from exploiting the situation in Syria to regain dominance, in comments echoed by his Turkish counterpart.

"Our country worked very hard and gave a lot over many years to ensure the elimination of the territorial caliphate of ISIS (IS), to ensure that that threat doesn't rear its head again," Blinken said at a joint press conference in Ankara.

"And it's imperative that we keep at those efforts."

Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan said in response that Turkey's "priorities include ensuring stability in Syria as soon as possible, preventing terrorism from gaining ground, and preventing ISIS and the PKK from dominating there."

PKK is the acronym for the Kurdistan Workers' Party, which has fought a decades-long insurgency against Turkey and is classified a terrorist organization by Ankara, the United States and the European Union, among others.

However, the PKK's sister organization in Syria, the Democratic Union Party (PYD), is not considered a terrorist organization by the US or the EU.

IS captured large swathes of Syrian and Iraqi territory in a lightning offensive in 2014, calling the areas it controlled a "caliphate."

It however lost the Middle Eastern territories it held by 2019 after years of fighting against American, Iraqi, and Kurdish forces, and has since carried out relatively minor acts of insurgency from remote hideouts.