Live Updates: Israel Says It Destroyed Syria’s Navy, Part of Wave of Post-Assad Attacks
Israel says it is striking Syrian military sites to keep them out of “the hands of extremists.” The rebels who toppled the Assad government began laying out their plans while rival groups fought fierce battles for territory.
Damascus
A rebel fighter looking through the office of Bouthaina Shaaban, a top adviser to Bashar al-Assad, at the abandoned presidential palace on Tuesday.
Nicole Tung for The New York Times
Latakia, Syria
The aftermath of a strike on Syrian naval ships.
Bilal Al Hammoud/EPA, via Shutterstock
Latakia, Syria
An Israeli airstrike hitting Syrian naval ships.
StringersHub via Reuters
Israel-annexed Golan Heights
Israeli military vehicles crossing the fence to the buffer zone with Syria.
Jalaa Marey/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
Qamishli, Syria
The aftermath of a strike on shipments of munitions.
Israel said Tuesday that it had destroyed Syria’s navy in overnight airstrikes, as it continued to pound targets in Syria despite warnings that its operations there could ignite new conflict and jeopardize the transition of power to an interim government.
Israel’s defense minister, Israel Katz, said that the Israeli military had “destroyed Syria’s navy overnight, and with great success.” His remarks appeared to confirm Israel’s responsibility for the destruction documented in the Syrian port city of Latakia, where photos showed the smoldering remains of ships sunk at their dock.
Mr. Katz said that Israel’s military “has been operating in Syria in recent days to hit and destroy strategic capabilities that pose a threat to Israel,” although he did not indicate what new or immediate risk Syria’s navy presented to Israel, which has the most powerful military in the Middle East.
Israeli warplanes have conducted hundreds of strikes in Syria since the fall of President Bashar al-Assad on Sunday, according to war monitors. Israel has characterized its operations as defensive, saying its military was striking suspected chemical weapons stockpiles in Syria to prevent them from falling “into the hands of extremists.”
“From here, I warn the rebel leaders in Syria: Those who follow Assad’s path will end like Assad,” Mr. Katz said.
As the Assad government fell to the rebels over the weekend, Israeli ground forces advanced beyond the demilitarized zone on the Israel-Syria border, marking their first overt entry into Syrian territory in more than 50 years. An Israeli military spokesman on Tuesday denied reports that the military was advancing on Damascus. The spokesman, Avichay Adraee, said the military was inside a buffer zone between Israel and Syria and at other points “in order to protect the Israeli border.”
Earlier Tuesday, Geir Pedersen, the United Nations special envoy for Syria, called on Israel to halt its “very troubling” military operations there, and said de-escalation was needed. “We are continuing to see Israeli movements and bombardments into Syrian territory. This needs to stop,” Mr. Pedersen told reporters in Geneva.
Here is what else to know:
Transitional government: The rebel alliance forming an interim government in Syria confirmed the appointment of Mohammed al-Bashir as prime minister, according to SANA, Syria’s state-run news agency. Mr. al-Bashir has been tasked with running a transitional government until March 1, the agency reported. He previously served as the head of a rebel-run administration in northwestern Syria. Earlier, the leader of the rebel alliance vowed to pursue and punish those who held senior positions under Mr. al-Assad.
Prison search: A Syrian volunteer rescue group, the White Helmets, said it had finished searching for detainees at “the infamous Sednaya Prison” on the outskirts of Damascus and had found no hidden cells. Thousands of people remain missing, the group said in a statement.
Al-Assad in Russia: Mr. al-Assad’s decision to step down as Syria’s president was a personal one, according to the Kremlin spokesman, Dmitri S. Peskov. Asked at a news briefing on Tuesday whether Moscow played any role in the former Syrian leader’s move to seek exile in Russia, Peskov replied that “it was Assad’s personal decision to resign from the position of head of state. No further remarks on this issue.”
Nick Cumming-Bruce contributed reporting.
Johnatan Reiss
Reporting from Tel Aviv
The Israeli military confirmed it had struck Syrian navy facilities overnight, and that it has conducted more than 350 airstrikes in the past 48 hours on military assets belonging to the Assad regime. Targets included anti-aircraft batteries, airfields and weapons production sites in Damascus, Homs, Tartus, Latakia, and Palmyra, according to the Israeli military.
Kobani came to global prominence in 2014, when ISIS fighters surrounded the town and Washington intervened to help fend them off.Credit...Lefteris Pitarakis/Associated Press
Fierce fighting was underway on Tuesday between rebels supported by Turkey and U.S.-backed, Kurdish-led forces near Kobani, a town in northern Syria with historic and symbolic significance for American involvement in the region.
The fight illustrates how, even as rebels try to build a government after taking Damascus, armed groups with competing interests are still fighting for territory and power, trying to fill the vacuum left by a collapsed regime and, in this case, pitting proxies of the United States and Turkey against each other.
On Tuesday, Turkish-backed fighters were “violently attacking” in the vicinity of Kobani, said Farhad Shami, a spokesman for the U.S.-allied forces. Both he and an independent group monitoring the war said Turkish warplanes were assisting their allies on the ground airstrikes.
Turkey and the United States, allies in NATO, both welcomed the ouster of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad over the weekend. But one of Turkey’s central strategic goals in the region is to weaken Kurdish forces, putting it at odds with Washington.
The clashes on Tuesday signaled an expansion of the fighting between the two sides that in recent days centered on the Kurdish-controlled city of Manbij, not far from the Turkish border. Turkish-backed forces captured the city on Monday, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, and pushed north toward Kobani, less than 40 miles away.
Kobani was once a relatively obscure Kurdish town near the border with Turkey in northern Syria. But it rocketed to global prominence in 2014, when Islamic State fighters surrounded the town and Washington intervened to help fend them off.
The United States armed the region’s main Syrian Kurdish militia and carried out hundreds of airstrikes in what was lauded as a model of international cooperation. That was the beginning of a partnership between Washington and the militia, known then as the People’s Protection Units, or Y.P.G., that drew the United States into Syria.
But the militia was a Syrian offshoot of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or P.K.K., that has long fought for Kurdish autonomy in Turkey and is considered a terrorist organization by the Turkish government.
After a bitter battle, the Kurdish militia prevailed in Kobani in early 2015. Backed by Washington and other allies, it drove ISIS from other parts of Syria and forged ties with other militias.
After prompting from the United States, in 2015 the Y.P.G. rebranded as the Syrian Democratic Forces — a mix of Kurdish, Arab and other fighters. It controls northeastern Syria, a region along the Turkish border, and a small contingent of U.S. troops is stationed there.
Analysts say that in recent days the Syrian Democratic Forces have been expanding the territory under their control by moving into areas vacated by the retreat of forces loyal to Mr. al-Assad. At the same time, they have been battling a faction of Turkish-backed fighters, the Syrian National Army, that is seeking to seize control of parts of northern Syria and drive out the Kurds.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which monitors the war, said that Turkish forces had shelled a key bridge west of Kobani and that there were unconfirmed reports of casualties.
The reports from both the Syrian Democratic Forces and the Syrian Observatory could not be independently verified, and there was no immediate comment from the Turkish or U.S. militaries. But on Sunday, the Pentagon said that Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III spoke to his Turkish counterpart and “reaffirmed the importance of close coordination” between the countries to prevent any further escalation “as well as to avoid any risk to U.S. forces and partners.”
A man praying inside a liberated cell in Sednaya prison, in the suburbs of Damascus, Syria, on Monday.Credit...Daniel Berehulak/The New York Times
As the Assad regime in Syria crumbled over the weekend, the conquering rebels threw open the gates to the prisons where the government had detained tens of thousands of its people, torturing and killing them on an industrial scale.
Throngs of Syrians rushed to the facilities to search for loved ones who had disappeared into the prison system during the 13-year civil war. No prison is more infamous than Sednaya, just north of the capital, Damascus.
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Rebel forces released many detainees from the notorious Sednaya military prison in Damascus. The government complex has a long history of human rights abuses under the rule of fallen President Bashar al-Assad.CreditCredit...Daniel Berehulak/The New York Times
Even before the civil war, Sednaya was known for widespread torture and abuse. But during the conflict, it became a site of depravity and violence, used to commit some of the worst atrocities of Bashar al-Assad’s rule when he was president.
Human rights groups say tens of thousands of people were detained in Sednaya. They were tortured, beaten and deprived of food, water, medicine and basic sanitation. Thousands were executed in mass hangings after sham trials. One group estimated that more than 30,000 detainees were killed there.
In most cases, the families of prisoners were given no information about their fate.
Who was sent to Sednaya prison?
The prison, built in 1987 on a hill north of Damascus, was a military prison that housed political prisoners.
According to a report by a group representing prisoners, it was protected by hundreds of guards and soldiers and surrounded by a ring of minefields.
The prison held an estimated 1,500 inmates in 2007, but its population surged to as many as 20,000 people at once after Syria’s civil war began, according to a 2017 report by Amnesty International.
What was its history?
Before the civil war began, in 2011, a majority of Sednaya’s inmates were Islamists, who had been encouraged by the Syrian government to join an offshoot of Al Qaeda that was fighting the United States in Iraq. Once they returned home, Mr. al-Assad jailed them to prevent them from threatening his rule.
As antigovernment protests spread across Syria in early 2011, the government released many of those jihadists and began imprisoning thousands of protesters, activists, journalists, doctors, aid workers, students and other Syrians. Many were sent to Sednaya.
The prison was the last place detainees were often dumped after long periods in other detention centers.
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Former detainees described abysmal, overcrowded cells at Sednaya prison.Credit...Daniel Berehulak/The New York Times
What were the conditions?
The Amnesty report and a separate investigation by the United Nations found that the Syrian authorities had deliberately exterminated detainees at Sednaya after torturing and housing them in appalling conditions. The U.N. investigators determined that such acts could amount to crimes against humanity.
The detainees were sexually assaulted, beaten on the genitals and forced to beat, rape or even kill one another, according to rights groups and a Times investigation. In 2017, the United States accused the Syrian government of using a crematory to hide mass murders in Sednaya, listing methods of physical torture such as beatings, stabbings, sexual assault, electric shocks and cutting off ears and genitals.
The few who won release, often through family connections or bribes, described detainees left to die of untreated wounds and illnesses in filthy, overcrowded cells. Prisoners were given just seconds to use latrines, so were often forced to relieve themselves in the cells, which lacked toilets. Meals usually consisted of a few mouthfuls of spoiled food. Many people developed serious infections, diseases and mental illnesses.
The conditions were similar at many prisons across the system. But at Sednaya, treatment could be especially sadistic, according to ex-inmates.
Prisoners were not allowed to look at the guards, talk or make any noise, even during torture. They could be punished by being denied water or forced to sleep naked, without blankets, in freezing cold.
Every morning, guards collected the bodies of those who had died overnight and took them to a military hospital, where their deaths were recorded as cases of heart or respiratory failure, according to the Amnesty report. Then, they were trucked to mass graves outside Damascus.
Loved ones outside the prison often never knew their fates.
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Relatives looking for the bodies of loved ones at the Sednaya prison on Tuesday.Credit...Daniel Berehulak/The New York Times
A grim protocol
According to former officials cited in the Amnesty report, detainees at Sednaya were routinely tortured into giving confessions. Then they were taken to military field courts, where they were convicted after trials that lasted two or three minutes.
Every week and often twice a week, according to the report, guards pulled groups of up to 50 people from their cells, telling them they were being transferred to civilian prisons. Instead, they were blindfolded, beaten severely in the prison’s basement and then taken to another building, where they were hanged in the middle of the night, the report said.
Prison officials called the mass hangings “the party.”
From 2011 to 2015, Amnesty found, 5,000 to 13,000 people, most of them civilians, were put to death in this way. The group did not have direct evidence of executions after 2015, but because detainees were still being transferred to Sednaya and sham trials still being held, it was likely the executions continued.
What is happening now at the prison?
Some 2,000 prisoners emerged from Sednaya on Sunday, according to Fadel Abdul Ghany, the director of the Syrian Network for Human Rights, which has rigorously monitored Mr. al-Assad’s labyrinth of prisons. But the rest of the approximately 11,000 detainees who he said were being held there when the government was overthrown were nowhere to be found.
“Where are the remaining prisoners?” Mr. Abdul Ghany said. “They have been killed.”
Still, in the confusion, different groups had different estimates of the numbers, and many Syrians held out hope that their disappeared relatives could still be found. Journalists, armed fighters and civilians, including children, roamed the prison, looking for signs of them.
“Seizing the city is a joy — we are joyous,” said one rebel fighter, Mohammad Bakir. “But the real victory will be when I find my family.” He had not heard from his mother, brother and cousin since they disappeared in 2012 after protesting against the government.
Videos sent to The Times by a group of doctors visiting Sednaya showed crowding and the dire conditions inside. Numbered cells, each of which appear to have held a dozen or more people, were littered with debris, clothing and belongings.
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Syrians made the trek to the prison to find news of people they knew on Monday.Credit...Daniel Berehulak/The New York Times
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Syrians heading to the prison on Monday.Credit...Daniel Berehulak/The New York Times
The White Helmets, a volunteer civil defense organization in Syria, said it had helped to release about 20,000 to 25,000 people from Sednaya, but noted that thousands more prisoners remained unaccounted for.
The Association of Detainees & the Missing in Sednaya Prison said that it had obtained a document showing there had been about 4,300 detainees as of Oct. 28 and that approximately that number had already walked free. In a statement, it said there was “no truth to the presence of detainees trapped underground.”
On Monday in Aleppo, a vehicle dropped off one former prisoner from Sednaya, his face gaunt and his legs and body weakened by years of detention. Two relatives helped him stand. A small band of musicians beat drums to celebrate his survival.
The man was soon thronged by people holding their cellphones up to his face. They were showing him photographs of detainees, hoping he might have news.
Aryn Baker, Ephrat Livni and Muhammad Haj Kadour contributed reporting.
Islamic State forces on Tuesday killed 54 people in the Homs region in central Syria who had been part of the Syrian government’s military and fled during the collapse of the Assad regime, according to the Syrian Observatory of Human Rights, a British-based monitoring group. The killings highlight the chaos in Syria as various rebel factions operate in different regions.
Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, the group which led the rebel push, had announced an amnesty for the rank and file of the government of former president Bashar al-Assad, though the group’s leader has vowed to hold accountable “criminals, murderers, and security and military officers involved in torturing the Syrian people.”
Johnatan Reiss
Reporting from Tel Aviv
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israel “would like to form relations with the new regime in Syria,” but said he had approved the bombing of Syrian military targets "so that those don't fall into jihadists' hands."
A Hayat Tahrir al-Sham fighter in 2021, near the town of Maaret al-Naasan in rebel-controlled Idlib.Credit...Ivor Prickett for The New York Times
The rebel alliance that ousted the government in Syria will not be removed from Britain’s list of banned terror organizations for now, the British government said on Tuesday.
But Downing Street also said that the group’s proscribed status would not prevent the British government from communicating with it.
The alliance, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, has been banned by Britain since 2017 because of its origins as an affiliate of Al Qaeda. It is designated a foreign terror organization by the State Department and by the United Nations.
Since the Islamist group’s rapid advance through Syria and the fall of Bashar al-Assad, questions have arisen as to whether Britain and others might consider removing its terrorist designation as the alliance attempts to form a transitional government.
In recent years the group has broken with Al Qaeda, and under its leader, Ahmed al-Shara, who is also known by the nom de guerre Abu Mohammad al-Jolani, it has sought greater international legitimacy and focused its ambitions on governing Syria.
During a visit to Saudi Arabia on Monday, Britain’s prime minister, Keir Starmer, said that it was “far too early” to consider a change of policy on the group’s status.
Britain’s foreign secretary, David Lammy, told lawmakers that the government would remain “cautious." He noted that Hayat Tahrir al-Sham had offered “reassurances to minorities in Aleppo, Hama and Damascus” and had “committed to cooperating with the international community over monitoring chemical weapons.”
But he concluded: “We will judge HTS by their actions, monitoring closely how they and other parties to this conflict treat all civilians in areas they control.”
On Tuesday an official spokesman for Mr. Starmer said that the presence of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham on the list of terror organizations did not mean the government could not communicate with the group because of a law that restricts such contacts.
Britain’s antiterror legislation permits dialogue with banned organizations for specific reasons, such as to encourage them to enter into a peace process or to facilitate the delivery of humanitarian aid, he added.
Early on Monday, there had been some confusion within Britain’s government when another senior minister, Pat McFadden, said the government would consider removing the terror designation and that a decision could come quickly.
But the British government appears to want more time to assess the intentions of Mr. al-Shara and to judge whether some of the assurances he has given are matched by actions.
Johnatan Reiss
Reporting from Tel Aviv
The Israeli defense minister, Israel Katz, said his country “destroyed Syria’s navy overnight, and with great success.” His remarks appeared to confirm Israel’s responsibility for the destruction overnight in the port city of Latakia, formerly a stronghold of Syria's ousted leader, Bashar al-Assad. Israel’s military “has been operating in Syria in recent days to hit and destroy strategic capabilities that pose a threat to Israel,” Katz said while visiting an Israeli naval base.“I warn the rebel leaders in Syria: Those who follow Assad’s path will end like Assad.”
A defaced portrait of Bashar al-Assad, the ousted president of Syria, in Damascus, the country’s capital, on Tuesday.Credit...Daniel Berehulak/The New York Times
The United Nations special envoy for Syria said on Tuesday that the rebel group that is asserting control there had sent positive messages about creating a more inclusive government to replace the ousted Assad regime. But the envoy, Geir Pedersen, called for military de-escalation and a halt to Israeli attacks on Syria.
“The situation is still moving fast,” Mr. Pedersen told reporters in Geneva, hours after briefing the U.N. Security Council.
“The realities so far is that the H.T.S. and also the other armed groups have been sending good messages to the Syrian people,” Mr. Pedersen said, referring to Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, the militant group at the head of the lightning advance that ended half a century of Assad family rule.
Hayat Tahrir al-Sham and other armed groups controlling Damascus, the capital, have issued “reassuring statements” about forming a government of “unity and inclusiveness,” Mr. Pedersen said. But he warned of the dangers of renewed violence among the patchwork of armed groups operating across Syria, citing continuing clashes between groups in the northeast, and of the risks posed by what he called Israel’s “very troubling” military operations in the country.
The Israeli military seized control of a buffer zone between Syria and the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights over the weekend, and in the past two days its forces have carried out strikes on airfields, military warehouses and other targets around Damascus and the port city of Latakia.
“This needs to stop,” Mr. Pedersen said. As Syria’s armed groups attempt an orderly transition to a new government, it is “extremely important that we don’t see any action from any international actor that destroys the possibility for this transformation in Syria to take place,” he added.
Mr. Pedersen urged Syria’s armed groups to protect civilians and to move toward a government based on the broadest possible representation of the country’s many ethnic and religious communities.
“If we do this, if we unite the Syrian parties, we bring together the different Syrian communities, then this could be the real beginning of something new for Syria,” he said.
The United Nations has listed Hayat Tahrir al-Sham as a terrorist group for the last nine years based on its past association with Al Qaeda. Mr. Pedersen said that this was a complicating factor but added that he believed the formation of an inclusive government would lead the international community to reconsider the designation.
“We also have to be honest — we have to look at the facts and to see what has happened during the last nine years,” Mr. Pedersen said, citing the group’s messages of inclusiveness and “reassuring things on the ground” in the areas it controls.
The aftermath of an Israeli strike in Nuseirat, in the central Gaza Strip, on Saturday.Credit...Eyad Baba/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
Palestinians in Gaza watched the fall of the Assad government in Syria with mixed feelings. Some hoped that their struggle, too, would soon come to an end while others worried that the developments would divert attention from the enclave, where deadly Israeli strikes showed no sign of letting up.
“This moment represents a victory not only for the resilient Syrian people, but also for the Arab world as a whole,” said Hadeel al-Astal, a 21-year-old student from the southern Gazan city of Khan Younis. “We hope that this marks the start of a new chapter, one where the Palestinian people’s suffering comes to an end and they are liberated.”
But Sobhi Firwana, 29, said that he was concerned that the situation in Syria could prolong the war in Gaza and further delay efforts to reach a cease-fire, pointing to the media’s pivot of coverage to Syria and Israel’s bombing campaign there.
Even as Israel pummeled targets in Syria, saying it was destroying military and weapons facilities there, its forces have continued strikes in Gaza. On Monday night, 25 people were killed in an airstrike on a house in Beit Hanoun, a town in northern Gaza, according to Mahmoud Basal, a spokesman for the Palestinian Civil Defense emergency service.
The Israeli military, which has called for evacuations of much of north Gaza, did not immediately comment on the strike, but it has been conducting an offensive there to try to extinguish a Hamas resurgence. It maintains that it tries to avoid civilian casualties but that Hamas has embedded itself in residential areas.
The deadly attack “due to the events happening in Syria and the diversion of the media coverage, possibly did not echo,” Mr. Basal said in a statement on Tuesday.
Talks on a cease-fire in Gaza are quietly advancing behind the scenes, according to mediators and officials, but details remain murky and an agreement is not in hand. Mr. Firwana, a lawyer and law professor from Khan Younis, said he was concerned that the situation in Syria could further push back a deal because Israel was now focused on securing its borders from potential threats in Syria.
But Ahmed Khalil, a 29-year-old from central Gaza, said he thought that the fall of Bashar al-Assad, along with the deaths of Hezbollah leaders in Lebanon, sent a strong message to Iran.
Iran has sustained blow after blow at the hands of Israel and the ouster of Mr. al-Assad severely damaged Iran’s regional strategy, which cultivated a network of allies, including Hamas, Hezbollah and the Syrian government.
Mr. Khalil said he thought that Iran’s weakening influence could “hasten the process of negotiations for a cease-fire and a deal for prisoners in Gaza.” If a cease-fire is reached in Gaza, the bakery worker said he would celebrate like many in Syria have over the last week, by preparing and handing out local desserts.
Husam al-Fiqy, a 41-year-old from Nuseirat in central Gaza, said that he was indifferent to the details of what happened in Syria, but he felt a sense of relief seeing the Syrian people “finally free themselves from their oppressive leader.”
The rebel alliance forming a transitional government in Syria has confirmed the appointment of Mohammed al-Bashir as the country's prime minister, according to SANA, Syria’s state-run news agency. Mr. al-Bashir has been tasked with running the transitional government until March 1, the agency reported. He previously served as the head of a rebel-run administration in northwestern Syria.
Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, vowed to support Syria’s stability and wipe out militant groups and Kurdish fighters there that his country deems to be terrorists. “Any attack against the freedom of the Syrian people, the stability of the new administration and the territorial integrity of the ancient Syrian soil will be met by us, together with the Syrian people,” Erdogan said in a televised speech to members of his party in Ankara. Groups like Islamic State and Kurdish militants “will be crushed as soon as possible,” he said. Turkey has continued to fight Kurdish militants in Syria’s northeast.
Al-Assad’s decision to step down as Syria’s president was a personal one, according to the Kremlin spokesman, Dmitri S. Peskov. Asked at a news briefing whether Moscow played any role in the Syrian leader’s move to seek exile in Russia, Peskov replied that “it was Assad’s personal decision to resign from the position of head of state. No further remarks on this issue.”
The U.N. special envoy for Syria has said that Israel should halt its “very troubling” military operations in Syria, calling for de-escalation to avert igniting new conflict. “We are continuing to see Israeli movements and bombardments into Syrian territory. This needs to stop,” the envoy, Geir Pedersen, told reporters in Geneva.
As Syrian rebels attempt to make the transition to a new government in Damascus, Mr. Pedersen added, it was “extremely important that we don’t see any action from any international actor that destroys the possibility for this transformation in Syria to take place.”
People searching for prisoners deep within the complex of the Sednaya prison, on the outskirts of Damascus, on Monday.Credit...Daniel Berehulak/The New York Times
The rebel alliance that overthrew the Assad government in Syria has vowed to find and punish senior officials who served in the previous regime.
“We will not relent in holding accountable the criminals, murderers, and security and military officers involved in torturing the Syrian people,” Ahmed al-Shara, the leader behind the rebel push, formerly known by his nom de guerre Mohammed al-Jolani, said in a statement posted on the Telegram social media app.
He gave no details about how the rebel group would pursue that course, or of any judicial process, which human rights experts say is essential to helping Syria move forward.
The group Mr. al-Shara leads, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, had earlier announced an amnesty for the rank and file of the government of former president Bashar al-Assad, but Mr. al-Shara said this did not extend to senior officials. His comments came amid fear that people who supported the fallen government could face retribution.
The group confirmed the appointment of Mohammed al-Bashir as the country’s prime minister on Tuesday, according to SANA, Syria’s state-run news agency. Mr. al-Bashir has been tasked with running the transitional government until March 1, the agency reported. He previously served as the head of a rebel-run administration in northwestern Syria.
Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, an Islamist group that was once linked to Al Qaeda, has tried to gain international legitimacy by eschewing global jihadist ambitions and focusing on organized governance in Syria. But it has also come under criticism for using authoritarian tactics and cracking down on dissent.
Human rights groups say that more than half a million people including around 200,000 civilians, died in Syria’s civil war, which began in 2011, but attention has focused on atrocities committed by Mr. al-Assad’s government.
The whereabouts of around 136,000 people who were arrested arbitrarily by the Assad regime is unknown and in many cases the government did not acknowledge that people had been detained, leaving family members in the dark, according to the Syrian Network for Human Rights. In addition, at least 15,000 people were tortured to death by the government, the network said.
Human rights experts say a judicial process is necessary and that the options for the rebel alliance include building cases in national, foreign and international courts. But they caution that it would take time to set up a national system capable of rendering justice and it can only be done once security in the country has been established.
Human rights groups in Syria, working with international organizations, have spent more than a decade documenting evidence of crimes committed in the country, particularly in the regime’s notorious prison network.
In addition, there have been around a dozen prosecutions in courts outside Syria. In one high-profile example, a court in the city of Koblenz, Germany, sentenced a former intelligence officer to life in prison in 2022 after he was convicted of crimes against humanity.
The court found that the former officer, Anwar Raslan, 58, oversaw the torture of prisoners in Damascus and the killing of at least 27 people there, in addition to the sexual abuse and rape of detainees.
The ultimate target for human rights groups working on Syria would be to bring Mr. al-Assad to justice. Russia announced over the weekend that Mr. al-Assad had arrived in Moscow and would be granted asylum, apparently putting him out of reach.
Damage at a research center north of Damascus, Syria’s capital, on Tuesday. The center has been linked to the country’s chemical weapons program.Credit...Louai Beshara/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
The Israeli military appeared to have unleashed more airstrikes across Syria overnight into Tuesday in an attempt to destroy weapons, aircraft and military facilities before the rebels controlling much of the country could take possession of them.
Photographs from Syria on Tuesday showed sunken boats at a shipyard, crumbled buildings and the charred remains of a science research center that had been linked to the country’s chemical weapons program, according to the news agencies that distributed the images.
It was unclear what had caused the damage in the photographs, but Israeli officials said that their country was striking weapon stockpiles in Syria, including chemical weapons and long-range missiles and rockets, to prevent Syria’s new leaders from potentially attacking Israel in the future.
Gideon Saar, Israel’s foreign minister, told reporters on Monday that the leaders of Syria’s rebels “are people with an extreme ideology of radical Islam.” Israeli forces are destroying the weapons “in order that they don’t fall in the hands of extremists,” he added.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, an independent group based in Britain that has tracked the civil war in Syria for years, said that it had documented 322 Israeli strikes in Syria since Sunday, when President Bashar al-Assad fled the country. It said the strikes had targeted “warehouses, aircraft squadrons, radars, military signal stations, and numerous weapons and ammunition depots,” including some as recently as Tuesday morning.
The group also said that Israeli forces had pushed further into Syrian territory, past a buffer zone set up by the United Nations.
Avichay Adraee, an Israeli military spokesman, said on social media on Tuesday that Israeli forces “are present inside the buffer zone and at defensive points close to the border in order to protect the Israeli border.” He added that reports that the military was “advancing or approaching Damascus are completely incorrect.”
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Israeli military vehicles entering the buffer zone with Syria from the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights on Tuesday.Credit...Jalaa Marey/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
The region between Israel and Syria has been fought over for decades. Israel captured the Golan Heights during a war in 1967 and annexed most of it in 1981. Most of the world views this area as Israeli-occupied Syrian territory. Beyond the Golan Heights, into Syrian territory, there is a 155-square-mile demilitarized buffer zone that has been patrolled by U.N. troops since the Arab-Israeli war of 1973, also known as the Yom Kippur War.
Israeli ground forces advanced into that zone on Saturday, their first overt entry since 1973. They took control of the summit of Mount Hermon in Syria, a strategic point to oversee the region, as well as other important locations to give them control of the area, Israeli officials said. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Monday that he had ordered the incursion to protect Israeli territory.
“For the time being, we are there,” Mr. Saar said. “But we define these steps as limited and temporary.”
Aaron Boxerman and Gabby Sobelman contributed reporting.
An Iranian flag was scattered on the floor of a cavernous reception hall in the presidential palace in Damascus on Tuesday.Credit...Nicole Tung for The New York Times
Red carpets still run down the airy halls that connect the wings of the presidential palace in Damascus from which Bashar al-Assad ruled Syria until only a few days ago.
Now a contingent of bearded rebels stand watch at the gate, keeping out looters and curious civilians. They sleep on couches in a cavernous reception hall. And they stop, at times, to marvel at how much the palace must have cost.
“It’s a wreck now but we want to fix it,” said a fighter with his face covered who gave only his nom de guerre, Abu Oweis. Of the palace, he said: “It is beautiful, but it was all for Bashar.”
He is a fighter with Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, the group that led the rebel charge from Idlib Province in the northwest all the way to Damascus, forcing Mr. al-Assad to flee. Abu Oweis said he was 20, had not finished high school and had never left Syria or visited its largest cities, Aleppo or Damascus.
“It’s a big city,” he said of the Syrian capital. “Really big.”
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A woman looked through documents strewn across the residence of President Bashar al-Assad.Credit...Nicole Tung for The New York Times
Outside the presidential palace, a family and their friends were wandering around, marveling at the grandeur of the structure and the landscaped gardens around it.
“I wanted to see all the blood that they drew from us to build this,” said Mohammed Abu al-Kheir, 42, an electronics trader.
“This is really rich, unnaturally rich,” he said, shaking his head. “Just the irrigation needed its own budget.”
Photos taken this morning show the aftermath of a strike on a Syrian naval ship in the port city of Latakia, a former stronghold of Bashar al-Assad. The source of the strike was not immediately clear. Israel has said it is striking targets in Syria since al-Assad’s ouster in an effort to prevent weapons and military infrastructure from falling into the hands of extremists.
Avichay Adraee, an Israeli military spokesman, said reports suggesting that the military was advancing on the Syrian capital were “completely incorrect.” Adraee said in a post on social media that the military was inside a buffer zone between Israel and Syria and at other points “in order to protect the Israeli border.” Israeli ground forces advanced beyond the demilitarized zone on the border over the weekend marking their first overt entry into Syrian territory since a war in 1973.
Rawan Sheikh Ahmad
Reporting from Haifa, Israel
The leader of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham has vowed to find and punish senior officials in the Assad government. “We will not relent in holding accountable the criminals, murderers, and security and military officers involved in torturing the Syrian people,” Ahmed al-Shara, also known by the nom de guerre Abu Mohammed al-Jolani, said in a statement posted on Telegram on Tuesday.
Rawan Sheikh Ahmad
Reporting from Haifa, Israel
Hayat Tahrir al-Sham had announced an amnesty for the rank and file of the Assad government, but Mr. al-Shara said in the statement that this did not extend to senior officials. There is fear among those who supported the fallen government that they could face retribution.
Celebrations at Umayyad Square in Damascus on Monday.Credit...Daniel Berehulak/The New York Times
Rebel forces have swept through Syria and forced former President Bashar al-Assad out of the country where his family had ruled with an iron fist since the early 1970s.
The rapid offensive marked a dramatic breakthrough for the many factions that have been trying to unseat the president for more than a decade of civil war. Many of the fighters in Syria shared a desire to topple Mr. al-Assad’s government, but not much else: Their ideologies, political beliefs and international backers are very different.
In the fallout created by Mr. al-Assad’s downfall, there are big questions about who will step in.
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Hayat Tahrir al-Sham fighters at a frontline position in 2021.Credit...Ivor Prickett for The New York Times
Hayat Tahrir al-Sham
Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, whose name means Organization for the Liberation of the Levant, is a former affiliate of Al Qaeda that broke with the older group years ago and came to dominate the last stronghold of Syria’s opposition.
It was the main rebel group leading the latest offensive, launching a surprise assault in late November out of its base in northwestern Syria that quickly led to the fall of the Assad government.
Members of the group had early links to the Islamic State, and then to Al Qaeda. In 2016, they tried to shed their extremist roots, banding together with several other factions to establish Hayat Tahrir al-Sham. The United States and other Western countries still consider it a terrorist group.
The group’s leader, Abu Mohammad al-Jolani — who as of Monday shed that nom de guerre and is now going by his real name, Ahmed al-Shara — told The New York Times that his primary goal was to “liberate Syria from this oppressive regime.” He has tried to gain legitimacy by providing services to residents in his stronghold of Idlib Province.
Because of its roots and its designation as a terrorist group, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham has struggled to raise funds, according to the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington research institute. The group raises money from border tariffs, collecting taxes on residents and holding a monopoly over utilities. Analysts say it has also been involved in trafficking the synthetic stimulant captagon.
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Gen. Mazlum Kobani, commander of the U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces, Kurdish-controlled northeast Syria in 2019.Credit...Ivor Prickett for The New York Times
Syrian Democratic Forces
Forces from Syria’s Kurdish ethnic minority, which makes up about 10 percent of the population, became the United States’ main local partner in the fight against the Islamic State in Syria, under the banner of the Syrian Democratic Forces.
After the Islamic State was largely defeated in 2019, the Kurdish-led forces consolidated control over towns in the northeast, expanding an autonomous region they had built there. But Kurdish fighters still had to contend with a longtime enemy, Turkey, which regards them as linked to Kurdish separatist insurgents inside Turkey.
Even as rebels took control of Damascus, fighting flared between Turkey and the Kurds in the northeast of Syria, centered on Manbij, a Kurdish-controlled city near the Turkish border. At least 22 members of the Syrian Democratic Forces were killed in and around Manbij, and 40 others were wounded, according to the Kurdish group.
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Recruits of the Turkish-backed Syrian National Army training in Afrin, Syria in 2023.Credit...Ghaith Alsayed/Getty Images
The Syrian National Army
This umbrella group includes dozens of groups with different beliefs. It receives funding and arms from Turkey, which has long been focused on expanding a buffer zone along its border with Syria to guard against the activities of Kurdish militants based in the region that it sees as a threat.
Turkey wants to create an area where it can resettle some of the three million refugees who have fled Syria and are living within its borders. But it has struggled to harmonize the ragtag groups that make up the Syrian National Army.
The group is largely composed of the dregs of the Syrian civil war, including many fighters whom the United States had rejected as criminals and thugs. Some received training from the United States early in the war, but most were dismissed as too extreme or too criminal. Most have no clear ideology and had turned to Turkey for a paycheck of about $100 a month when the group was formed.
On Monday, there were fierce battles in the northern city of Manbij between the Syrian National Army, supported by Turkish airstrikes and artillery, and the Kurdish Syrian Democratic Forces.
According to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a war monitoring group based in Britain, the city was captured by the Syrian National Army. A spokesperson for the Syrian Democratic Forces said fighters with the Syrian National Army had taken only 60 percent of the city. The claims could not be independently verified.
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Young Druze fighters patrolling the village of Rami in southern Syria in 2018.Credit...Hassan Ammar/Associated Press
The Druse fighters are part of a newly formed group of Syrian rebels, which includes fighters from other backgrounds, working under the name the “Southern Operations Room.”
The Druse are a religious group that practices an offshoot of Islam, developed in the 11th century, that contains elements of Christianity, Hinduism, Gnosticism and other philosophies. There are more than one million Druse across the Middle East, mostly in Syria and Lebanon, with some also in Jordan and Israel.
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Islamic State fighters parading in the streets of northern Raqqa province in Syria in 2014.Credit...Reuters
The Islamic State in Iraq and Syria
The Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, better known as ISIS, seized vast stretches of territory in Syria and Iraq in 2014, establishing a brutal regime before it was beaten back by a U.S.-led coalition. Now its members are largely in hiding.
Lately, there have been signs of the group’s resurgence in Syria amid wider instability in the region. The Pentagon warned in July that Islamic State attacks in Syria and Iraq were on track to double compared to the previous year. The group has repeatedly tried to free its members from prisons and has maintained a shadow governance in parts of northeastern Syria, the U.S. said.
President Biden announced on Sunday that the U.S. military has been conducting airstrikes in Syria to keep the Islamic State from reasserting itself in the power vacuum created by Mr. al-Assad’s ouster.
The United States has about 900 troops in Syria to help contain and defeat what remains of ISIS there. The U.S. has not given a date for ending its presence in the country, saying it was contingent on conditions within the war-torn country. Those conditions have now changed dramatically.
“We’re cleareyed about the fact that ISIS will try to take advantage of any vacuum to reestablish its capability, to create a safe haven,” Mr. Biden said. “We will not let that happen.”
A poster of President Bashar al-Assad of Syria hanging on the side of a shopping mall decimated by bombs in the war-ravaged city of Homs, Syria, in June.Credit...Sergey Ponomarev for The New York Times
Great powers have fought for centuries for influence in the territory known today as Syria, each seeing a prize in its strategic position, stretching from the Mediterranean Sea to the Euphrates River and beyond. That struggle continues today.
In Syria’s 13-year civil war, Iran, Russia and the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah backed the brutal regime of President Bashar al-Assad, while the United States, Turkey and other countries backed various rebel groups.
Now, after a lightning advance by rebels and the rapid-fire collapse of Mr. al-Assad’s government, great powers — albeit with different ones in ascendence — are jockeying for advantage within Syria’s borders. For the first time in years, the skies are empty of Syrian and Russian bombers — but airstrikes by Israel, Turkey and the United States continue.
Here is a look at the foreign countries that have been present in Syria — often operating through local allies — and what they stand to gain and lose from the end of the Assad regime.
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Kurdish women and children from Syria at a Turkish military checkpoint near Kobani in 2014.Credit...Bryan Denton for The New York Times
Turkey
Turkey has two primary concerns in Syria: Kurds and refugees.
Eastern Syria is home to a sizable ethnic Kurdish population, which the Turkish government sees as allied with Kurdish separatist groups in Turkey. The country is also hosting nearly four million Syrian refugees who fled persecution by the Assad government, and President Recep Tayyip Erdogan would like them to return home.
Turkey, which was once the seat of the vast Ottoman Empire that included much of Syria, has backed an array of different rebel groups that hold territoryalong the Syrian-Turkish border.One of those groups, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, which led the offensive that toppled Mr. al-Assad, had benefited from Turkey’s military presence in the area.
It is unclear whether Turkey approved the group’s decisive offensive.
However, Ankara’s closest ties are with the Syrian National Army, which has functioned almost as a proxy force for Turkey — in the past, the group’s leadership has said it received funding and weapons — and in turn it has pushed the Syrian Kurds, whom the Turks view as a security threat, back from the border. Just in the last few days, as the rebels led by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham took control of the capital, Damascus, fighting flared between the Syrian National Army and the Kurds in northeastern Syria, centered on Manbij, a Kurdish-controlled city near the border with Turkey.Turkey supported the Syrian National Army with airstrikes.
Turkey now seems to be the foreign power with the most access and influence with the armed groups now in charge and in a prime position to pursue its own goals in Syria. That could mean further attacks against the Syrian Kurds, and the return of refugees who are currently in Turkey.
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Israeli soldiers in the Golan Heights in 2015.Credit...Uriel Sinai for The New York Times
Israel
Israel has fought three wars with Syria, and has had many more armed confrontations. It holds much of the mountainous territory in the southwest of Syria known as the Golan Heights, an annexation that is not recognized by the United Nations and many other countries.
During the civil war, Israel regularly conducted airstrikes against Iran’s and Hezbollah’s weapons stores and personnel in Syria. In April, it bombed an Iranian Embassy building in Damascus, killing senior Iranian military and intelligence officials
Within hours of the fall of the Assad regime, Israel moved troops into the Golan Heights, advancing beyond the demilitarized zone in its first overt entry into Syrian territory since the 1973 October War.
Israeli officials also said that their country was striking weapon stockpiles in Syria, including chemical weapons and long-range missiles and rockets, to prevent Syria’s new leaders from potentially attacking Israel in the future.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, an independent group based in Britain that has tracked the civil war in Syria for years, said that it had documented 322 Israeli strikes in Syria since Sunday, when President Bashar al-Assad fled the country. It said the strikes had targeted “warehouses, aircraft squadrons, radars, military signal stations, and numerous weapons and ammunition depots,” including some as recently as Tuesday morning.
Gideon Saar, Israel’s foreign minister, told reporters on Monday that the leaders of Syria’s rebels “are people with an extreme ideology of radical Islam.” Israeli forces are destroying the weapons “in order that they don’t fall in the hands of extremists,” he added.
Israel has touted its actions against Hamas and Hezbollah as instrumental in the overthrow of the Assad government. But it is not clear that a new government in Damascus, dominated by militant Islamists, will make Israel any safer.
Iran
Iran’s relationship with Syria dates back almost 50 years, when Syria’s president at the time, Hafez Assad, supported Iran in its eight-year war with Iraq. As Iran built a network of like-minded groups across the Middle East as a counterweight against the United States and Israel, Syria was the only state to become part of what Iran called its “Axis of Resistance.”
Syria became Iran’s main overland supply route to transport weapons to Hezbollah in Lebanon. In return, Iran sent military advisers to support the Assad regime during the civil war, along with fighters from its ally Hezbollah and two brigades under the command of Iran’s Quds Forces that was made up of refugees from Pakistan and Afghanistan who had fled to Iran.
A Russian Sukhoi Su-35 fighter jet at an air base in Syria in 2019.Credit...Maxime Popov/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
Russia
The Russian relationship with Syria dates to the days of the Soviet Union. At the end of the Cold War, with the United States asserting its presence in Arab countries, Russia saw the Assad government as a crucial ally in the Middle East, one that could provide a counterweight to the American presence.
During the Syrian civil war, Russia made it a priority to keep its ally in power. It also saw the Syrian leader as a bulwark against Islamist extremism from Al Qaeda and the Islamic State. Russia sold weapons to the Assad government, deployed fighters from Russia’s Wagner group, expanded its naval base in Tartus, Syria, and opened an air base near Damascus.
With the demise of the Assad regime, Russia could lose much of its influence in Syria,but analysts say it probably will try to keep its Tartus base, which is its only Mediterranean portfor its Black Sea fleetIt is making conciliatory gestures toward the rebel forces who now control the country, and has said it is too soon to make any decisions about the fate of its military bases in Syria.
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American Special Forces troops outside the northern Syrian city of Manbij, in 2018.Credit...Mauricio Lima for The New York Times
United States
The U.S.-Syria relationship has never been particularly friendly. The United Statessevered diplomatic relations in 1967 during the Arab-Israeli war, and placed Syria on its list of state sponsors of terrorism in 1979.
The mainU.S. interest in Syria now is the defeat of the Islamic State, which maintains a presence in the northeastern and central parts of the country. In 2019, during Donald Trump’s first term as president, he pulled most U.S. forces out of Syria, but about 1,000 U.S. Special Operations troops remain, and theywork closely with Syrian Kurdish troops trained by the United States.
President Biden said on Sunday that the U.S. military has been conducting airstrikes in Syria to keep the Islamic State from reasserting itself in the power vacuum created by Mr. al-Assad’s ouster. He said the United States would support the region “should any threat arrive from Syria during this period of transition.”
“We’re cleareyed about the fact that ISIS will try to take advantage of any vacuum to re-establish its capability, to create a safe haven,” Mr. Biden said. “We will not let that happen.”
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