Al-Assad family

The time is now for the international community to support the "spirit created by Syrian people" to rebuild their country after the fall of the Bashar al-Assad regime, according to the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA).

Syrians wait to cross into Syria from Türkiye at the Öncüpınar border gate, near the town of Kilis, southern Türkiye, Tuesday, Dec. 17, 2024.

Approximately 100,000 refugees have returned to Syria from neighboring countries since opposition fighters overthrew Syria's strongman Bashar al-Assad, the head of the U.N. migration agency estimated on Dec. 18.

A Syrian "revolutionary" flag is seen on a Syrian Air airplane ahead of take-off as the airport reopens for internal flights in Damascus, Syria, Wednesday, Dec. 18, 2024.

The first flight since the ouster of Syria's president Bashar al-Assad took off on Wednesday from Damascus airport to Aleppo in the country's north, AFP journalists saw.

A UN refugee agency official has said that some 1 million Syrian refugees are expected to return to the country in the first six months of 2025, asking states to refrain from forcing them to do so.

A Syrian independence-era flag flutters atop the parliement building in the capital Damascus on Dec. 14, 2024.

Syria's new rulers stepped up engagement on Tuesday with countries that deemed ousted president Bashar al-Assad a pariah, with the French flag raised at the embassy for the first time in over a decade.

Former Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad has issued his first public statement since his regime was toppled earlier this month. Shared via the Syrian presidency's Telegram channel, Assad defended his leadership and claimed he never intended to leave Syria, asserting that his departure occurred only after rebel forces overtook Damascus.

Ousted Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad said he had no plans to leave the country and wanted to keep fighting, but the Russian military evacuated him after their base in western Syria came under attack.

The comments are the first by Assad since he was overthrown by the rebel groups on Dec. 8.

Syria’s central bank, under Bashar al-Assad, airlifted some $250 million in cash to Moscow between 2018 and 2019, a period during which the Syrian dictator’s regime was utterly dependent on Russian military support.

The government is closely following developments in Syria, concerned about the prevailing uncertainty and Turkey's seeming expansion of its regional influence.

More than 7,600 Syrian migrants crossed the Turkish border to return home in the five days after the fall of Syrian strongman Bashar al-Assad, Turkish Interior Minister Ali Yerlikaya has announced.

Yerlikaya listed the total number of Syrians "who returned voluntarily from Türkiye" each day between Dec. 9 and 13, with the five-day figure totaling 7,621 migrants.