Syrians celebrate collapse of Bashar al-Assad regime

Syrians in the capital city of Damascus are celebrating the fall of President Bashar al-Assad after rebel forces entered the city with scant resistance from regime forces and declared it liberated.

Thousands gathered in cars and on foot in the main square of Damascus to celebrate.

Omar Daher, a 29-year-old lawyer, said his feelings were “indescribable.”

“After the fear that he [Assad] and his father made us live in for many years, and the panic and state of terror that I was living in, I can’t believe it,” he told the Associated Press.

Another Damascus resident, Mohammed Amer Al-Oulabi, 44, said he wasn’t able to sleep last night until he heard the news of Assad’s fall. “From Idlib to Damascus, it only took them (the opposition forces) a few days, thank God. May God bless them, the heroic lions who made us proud.”

A local named Ghazal al-Sharif declared that “God had answered” the prayer of “every oppressed person.”

The removal of Assad – who has not been heard from since the rebels’ claim – brings an end to more than 50 years of his family’s autocratic rule of the nation of about 23 million, which has been buffeted and fractured by more than a decade of civil war.