Syria’s Basahr al-Assad and family in Moscow after Russia granted them asylum: reports

Ousted Syrian president Bashar Assad has fled to Russia after Islamist rebels rolled into the capital Damascus and ended his despotic family’s 50-year reign of terror.

Assad, who inherited the office from his father in 2000, reportedly slipped out of Syria early Sunday morning as rebels closed in on his palace. He arrived in Moscow later in the day, according Russian state news agency Tass.

A longtime protector of the Assad regime’s, Moscow has granted the 59-year-old and his family asylum after they made their way to the city by private jet, the news agencies reported.

Rebels stormed through the gates of Damascus Sunday where they were met with no resistance from the government’s army. Most gunfire crackling through the streets has come from celebratory shots in the air, while crowds have filled the city squares waving revolutionary flags and chanting “freedom.”

Assad’s palace has also been sacked, with rebels making off with gaudy loot and exposing the gratuitous luxury his family has been enjoying while the Syrian people suffered through more than a decade of bloody civil war.

Moscow meanwhile has called for an emergency U.N. Security Council session to discuss the situation, while Russian news agencies reported the rebels have promised not to harm Russia’s military bases in Syria.

The rebels now face the task of establishing a government after 14 years of war and dissent, which Assad met with the same brutal and violent tactics his father Hafez al-Assad used to torture the country into submission across his 30-year reign.

Follow the latest on the fallout of Assad’s ouster in Syria

A former al-Qaeda leader who said he cut ties with the terror group years ago, Abu Mohammed al-Golani, heads the strongest rebel faction and is poised to take control of Syria.

Al-Golani claims to support reshaping Syria into a place where people from numerous beliefs can thrive together, and called Assad’s flight “a victory to the Islamic nation” while addressing the public Sunday.

Despite the stunning victory in Damascus, Syria still has a long way to go before the fighting settles down.

Rebels across the country remain divided into numerous factions, while fighting continues in the north between Turkey-backed fighters and US-allied Kurdish forces. ISIS also still maintains footholds in the country.

But from Damascus, al-Golani is already at work trying to win the people over.

A rebel statement was broadcast over Syrian state television Sunday announcing Assad had been overthrown and that all prisoners he’d been holding had been freed. It also called for people to preserve institutions of “the free Syrian state.”

Among the freed were reportedly prisoners at the notorious Saydnaya prison, where human rights groups alleged thousands of Assad’s supposed enemies have been tortured and killed for years.

Footage circulating online purported to be from the prison showed rebels breaking open cells and dozens of women — and even children — emerging from behind bars in shock.

“This happiness will not be completed until I can see my son out of prison and know where is he,” said Bassam Masr, the relative of one prisoner. “I have been searching for him for two hours. He has been detained for 13 years.”

Rebels have insisted the new Syria will be different from Assad’s.

“Syria is for everyone, no exceptions. Syria is for Druze, Sunnis, Alawites, and all sects,” said rebel commander Anas Salkhadi in a television appearance.

“We will not deal with people the way the Assad family did,” he added.

With Post wires.