Mystery surrounded the whereabouts of Bashar al-Assad, who was no longer in Damascus when rebels captured the Syrian capital on Sunday, ending more than five decades of his family’s rule.
Two senior army officers said Assad had boarded a plane early on Sunday in Damascus for an unknown destination.
Russia, one of Assad’s closest allies, confirmed that Assad had left Syria but did not say where he was, including whether Moscow had given him refuge.
“As a result of negotiations between B. Assad and a number of participants in the armed conflict on the territory of the Syrian Arab Republic, he decided to resign from the presidency and left the country, giving instructions for a peaceful transfer of power,” Russia’s Foreign Ministry said in a statement.
Assad has not spoken in public since the sudden rebel advance a week ago, when insurgents seized northern Aleppo in a surprise attack before marching into a succession of cities as frontlines crumbled.
There was also no official announcement on Sunday of the whereabouts of Assad’s wife Asma or their children, the eldest of whom has long studied in Russia and received a degree from a university in Moscow last year.
A Syrian Air plane took off from Damascus airport around the time the capital was reported to have been taken by rebels, according to data from the Flightradar website.
The aircraft initially flew towards Syria’s coastal region, a stronghold of Assad’s Alawite sect, but then made an abrupt U-turn and flew in the opposite direction for a few minutes before disappearing off the map. Reuters could not ascertain who was on board.
Two Syrian sources said the sudden change in course and disappearance of the plane from tracking could indicate it had been shot down, or that it had switched off its transponder.
The plane departed Damascus soon after rebels had taken the central city of Homs, cutting the capital off from the coast where Assad’s Russian ally has air and naval bases.
The only trackable flight departing Syria visible after midnight on Flightradar24, a flight tracking site, left Homs for the UAE, hours after rebels had captured the city.
As the rebel advance gathered steam over the past week, there was speculation that Assad might seek refuge in Moscow or with his other main ally Iran. Syrian state media had said on Saturday he was still in Damascus.
He had visited Moscow just before the rebel offensive. Iranian news agencies published a photograph of him on Saturday that they said showed him meeting a top Iranian official in Damascus.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)