BBC – Bashar Al-Assad and his family have arrived in Moscow and been granted asylum “out of humanitarian considerations”, Russian news agencies are quoting a Kremlin source as saying.
Russian state TV also reported the news, which put an end to speculation about the whereabouts of Syria’s former president after rebel forces seized control of Damascus.
Earlier, the Russian foreign ministry had announced that Assad “decided to resign the presidency and left the country, giving instructions for a peaceful transfer of power”.
Russia, which has two key military bases in Syria, is a staunch ally of Assad and had intervened in Syria’s 13-year civil war in an effort to keep him in power.
But it was unable to stop the collapse of his government in the face of a lightning rebel offensive that took advantage of his other key allies, Iran and Lebanon’s Hezbollah movement, being distracted by other conflicts.
