How Syria’s rebels toppled the Assad regime, in 7 maps
By Lou Robinson, CNN
(CNN) — For more than a decade, Syria’s multi-front civil war had raged, leaving the country divided and scarred. And for most of that time, the fighting showed little sign of stopping. Then, within a couple of weeks, Bashar al-Assad’s regime collapsed.
On November 27, Syrian rebel forces led by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) — a former al Qaeda affiliate — swept across the country in a surprise assault, appearing to take advantage of the fact Assad’s allies were distracted with conflicts elsewhere in the region.
The speed and size of the reversal was stunning: Before that assault, pro-Assad forces had controlled more than 60% of Syrian land, according to a CNN analysis of data from the Institute for the Study of War and AEI’s Critical Threats Project.
CNN mapped how the rebel groups captured several key cities, cutting off pro-regime forces and successfully toppling Assad’s regime after 11 days of fighting.
In the first week, rebel forces made gains in northern Syria. HTS-affiliated rebels seized territory and took control of Aleppo, the country’s second-biggest city, on Dec. 3, before moving south toward Hama.
Just days later, HTS-affiliated rebels claimed control of Hama city and continued advancing south toward Homs, while unidentified opposition groups captured Daraa in the south.
By Dec. 7, Assad’s regime was beginning to collapse, with Assad’s forces retreating from rebel-controlled areas across the country.
By Dec. 8, the rebels had claimed control of Damascus, Syria’s capital. The same day, Assad left his post and fled to Russia — giving instructions to transfer power peacefully — and flew to Moscow where he and his family have been granted asylum, according to Russia’s foreign ministry.
The collapse of the Assad regime has also prompted a punishing military response from Israel, which has launched airstrikes across Syria and deployed ground troops both into and beyond a demilitarized buffer zone established in 1974. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday said he had ordered the military to seize that demilitarized “area of separation” between the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights and the rest of Syria.
A Syrian rebel-linked government leader, Mohammad Al-Bashir, has been appointed as the country’s caretaker prime minister for the next three months, during which his government will oversee Syria’s transition to a new government, he announced in a televised address on December 10.
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CNN’s Alex Marquardt, Katie Bo Lillis, Natasha Bertrand, Mick Krever, Eyad Kourdi and Dana Karni contributed to this report.
