Last Updated:
Assad family has been granted asylum by the Russian authorities on humanitarian grounds.
Syria’s ouster President Bashar al-Assad (File)
Ousted Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and his family have arrived in Russia’s Moscow after the rebels took over the country’s capital city Damascus on Sunday, Russian news agencies reported citing a Kremlin source.
“Assad and members of his family have arrived in Moscow,” the source told the Russian news agencies. Assad family has been granted asylum by the Russian authorities on “humanitarian grounds”, the source added.
Earlier in the day, Russia announced that Assad had resigned from the post of the President of Syria and left the country to an unknown destination.
“As a result of negotiations between B Assad and a number of participants in the armed conflict in the SAR, he decided to leave the presidential post and left the country, giving instructions to transfer power peacefully,” the Russian foreign ministry had said in a statement.
Speculations swirled over the fate of Assad after the rebels advanced the capital city. It was assumed that he might seek refuge in Russia or Iran.
As reported earlier, the ousted leader was visiting Moscow just before the rebel offensive and Iranian news agencies published a photograph of him that showed him meeting a top Iranian official in Damascus.
Assad has not spoken in public since the rebels advance a week ago, when insurgents seized northern Aleppo in a surprise attack before marching into a succession of cities as frontlines crumbled.
Meanwhile, as per the sources, Moscow had received guarantees from Syrian insurgents of the security of Russian military bases and diplomatic posts in Syria.
