Bashar al-Assad and his family have arrived in Moscow and been granted asylum “out of humanitarian considerations”, Russian news agencies are quoting a Kremlin source as saying.
Russian state TV also reported the news, which put an end to speculation about the whereabouts of Syria’s former president after rebel forces seized control of Damascus.
Earlier, the Russian foreign ministry had announced that Assad “decided to resign the presidency and left the country, giving instructions for a peaceful transfer of power”.
Russia, which has two key military bases in Syria, is a staunch ally of Assad and had intervened in Syria’s 13-year civil war in an effort to keep him in power.
But it was unable to stop the collapse of his government in the face of a lightning rebel offensive that took advantage of his other key allies, Iran and Lebanon’s Hezbollah movement, being distracted by other conflicts
Assad has not been pictured since he met the Iranian foreign minister in Damascus a week ago. That day, he vowed to “crush” the rebels seizing territory with dizzying speed.
Early on Sunday morning, after their fighters entered the city without resistance, the Islamist militant group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) and its allies declared that “the tyrant Bashar al-Assad has fled”.
With no official confirmation from the Syrian presidency, military or state media, rumours swirled about Assad’s whereabouts.
The head of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR), a UK-based monitoring group, reported that a plane believed to be carrying Assad “left Syria via Damascus international airport before the army security forces left” the facility. Rami Abdul Rahman said he had information that the plane was meant to take off at 22:00 (20:00 GMT) on Saturday.
People also followed flights in and out of Damascus to work out when Assad might have left and where he might have gone.
Reuters news agency cited two unnamed senior Syrian army officers as saying that Assad had boarded a Syrian Air plane at Damascus airport early on Sunday.
It noted that a Syrian Air Ilyushin Il-76T cargo plane took off from the airport at 03:59 local time (01:59 GMT) with an undisclosed destination.
According to data from Flightradar24, the plane initially flew towards the Mediterranean coast, which is a stronghold of Assad’s Alawite sect and is also home to two key Russian military bases – Hmeimim airbase and the naval base in Tartous.
But after flying over Homs, the plane made a U-turn and started flying eastwards again while also losing altitude. The plane’s signal was lost at around 04:39 (02:39 GMT), when it was about 13km (8 miles) west of Homs and flying at an altitude of only 1,625ft (495m)
