Who are the Syrian rebels claiming control of Damascus?
Rebel forces claim to have taken control of the Syrian capital after storming through the country in less than two weeks.
According to reports, authoritarian ruler Bashar al Assad has fled Damascus on a plane headed to an unknown destination, ending his 24-year rule.
While Syrians celebrate in the streets with chants for freedom, attention will also turn to the insurgents and what happens next.
Who are the rebels?
The initial assault on regime forces, which began in the northern city of Aleppo last week, was carried out by a variety of Mr Assad’s opponents.
This included rebels under the banner of the Syrian National Army, backed by Turkey, but the offensive has mostly been led by jihadi group Hayat Tahrir al Sham (HTS).
Once known as the Nusra Front, a former wing of al Qaeda, HTS is said to have around 30,000 troops and has long been designated a terrorist group by the US and Russia.
It was formed to oppose the Syrian government and was founded by Abu Muhammed al Jolani, cutting ties with al Qaeda in 2016 and making an effort to appear moderate.
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Rebel fighters in the city of Homs. Pic: Reuters
As rebels entered Aleppo, video showed him issuing orders by phone, forbidding fighters from entering homes and reminding them to protect citizens.
Aron Lund, a fellow at think-tank Century International, said Mr Jolani and HTS have clearly changed, while adding they remain “pretty hardline”.
“It’s PR, but the fact they are engaging in this effort at all shows they are no longer as rigid as they once were,” he said.
“Old-school al Qaeda or the Islamic State would never have done that.”
But the US’s Commission on International Religious Freedom said in 2022 that despite the “rebrand”, HTS “restricts religious freedom” and threatens the safety of religious minorities.
What plans do they have?
Mr Jolani, himself designated a terrorist by the US in 2013, has tried to reassure Syrian minorities who fear jihadists.
In 2023, he allowed the first Christian mass in years in the northwestern city of Idlib, and on Wednesday insisted he would protect residents of a Christian town south of Aleppo.
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Syrian rebels announce Damascus ‘freed’
The group’s political plans remain to be seen, with Robert Ford, former US ambassador to Syria, telling Sky News he has not seen “detailed programs”.
“We don’t know exactly what they’re going to do,” he said. “I would say here that after a 13-year incredibly bloody and vicious civil war, right now it’s a day for Syrians to celebrate, and to hope for things that will turn out better.
“There will be plenty of hard work quickly waiting for them.”
Why has this happened now?
These anti-Assad victories are years in the making, more than a decade on from the start of Syrian civil war.
But the rapid rebel progress has stunned the international community.
Key locations in Syria as well as the Iraqi town of Al Qaim, where troops sought refuge.
Former head of the British Army’s chemical weapons unit, Hamish De Bretton-Gordon, said the timing is “no coincidence”.
“With Hezbollah much diminished, the Iranian proxy in the region, and also other Iranian militias, it gave the rebels an opportunity,” he told Sky News.
“With Russia taking so many forces away from Syria to bolster their special military operation in Ukraine, it left Assad exposed and the rebels have really taken advantage of it.”
What other nations have interests in Syria?
The assault had raised the prospect of another front reopening in the Middle East, at a time when US-backed Israel has been fighting Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon, both Iran-allied groups.
Russia, which was Mr Assad’s main international backer, is also preoccupied with its war in Ukraine.
Previous military intervention by Russia and Iran – alongside support from other groups – had allowed Mr Assad to remain in power and retain 70% of Syria under his control.
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The US has about 900 troops in northeast Syria to guard against a resurgence by the Islamic State, which was defeated in Syria and Iraq by 2019, by a US-led coalition that included Kurdish fighters and UK air support.
Turkey, which also opposes Kurdish expansion, has forces in Syria alongside its reported influence with the broad alliance of opposition forces.
An unknown disease has killed more than 50 people in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), according to doctors.
The World Health Organisation’s (WHO) Africa office said the first outbreak was discovered in the town of Boloko, in the northwest of the country.
It is reported that three children ate a bat and died following haemorrhagic fever symptoms.
The interval between the onset of symptoms and death has been 48 hours in the majority of cases.
“That’s what’s really worrying,” Serge Ngalebato, medical director of Bikoro Hospital, a regional monitoring centre, told the news agency, The Associated Press.
An outbreak was reported in Boloko in January followed by more cases in Bomate in February
The outbreak began on 21 January and 419 cases have been recorded including 53 deaths.
There was a second outbreak of the mystery illness in the town of Bomate on 9 February.
Samples from 13 cases have been sent for testing to the National Institute for Biomedical Research in the DRC’s capital, Kinshasa, the WHO said.
All samples have been negative for Ebola or other common haemorrhagic fever diseases like Marburg. Some tested positive for malaria.
Last year, another mystery flu-like illness which killed dozens of people in another part of Congo was considered likely to be malaria.
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Scientists have had concerns for a long time about diseases jumping from animals to humans in places where wild animals are eaten.
The number of these types of outbreaks in Africa has surged by more than 60% in the last decade, the WHO said in 2022.
Harun is sitting hunched on a bed with a sheet over his head.
He lives in a state of psychosis and wants to return to his home in central Khartoum.
He tells us where to turn and which bridges to cross to get him there.
The war has ripped away the stability that kept him sane and permeates the mental illness that now haunts his days.
Harun lives in a state of psychosis – he may not be wounded but he is deeply scarred
“I have 37 bullets still inside me and a sniper shot me in my legs. I took 251 bullets in my legs and hip,” he says after lifting the blanket and pointing to parts of his body that show no signs of harm.
He may not have been wounded but he is deeply scarred.
We find him in a shelter for discharged hospital patients who cannot return home.
In a tented corner in the yard outside his ward, there are men nursing gunshot wounds and amputated limbs.
Badreldeen was trapped in the Shambat neighbourhood of Khartoum North as it was occupied by paramilitary fighters and militiamen belonging to the Rapid Support Forces (RSF).
“I told the RSF that we are not army soldiers. We are civilians but they just fired at us,” he says looking down at his bandaged leg.
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Sky News goes inside a liberated district in Sudan’s war-torn capital
Final battles for liberation of Sudan’s capital proving to be most brutal
As the RSF battles Sudan’s military for control of the capital and country, millions have been displaced and dispossessed with tens of thousands of people killed, injured and detained.
He adds: “In Shambat, lots of people died. Five people were killed in our street alone.”
‘We are civilians but they just fired at us,’ Badreldeen says looking down at his bandaged leg
Shambat is a residential district in Khartoum North – the northeastern wing of Sudan’s tri-capital known as Bahri – that has now been fully reclaimed by the military.
Some are slowly returning to their devastated homes in once-occupied areas and others wounded and brutalised under siege are flooding hospitals in the capital’s old city Omdurman.
The sounds of shells whizz over us as we move through Bahri’s southern edges.
Gunfire rings out aimed at positions just across the Blue Nile.
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On the frontline of the fight for Khartoum
The turning road to Kober Bridge and into Khartoum is bordered by a residential compound full of identical bullet-riddled orange blocks.
The charred, chewed-out corners of some of the buildings are a harsh break from uniformity.
The bridge is still intact but its base is a haunting scene.
An abandoned RSF position where blackened car bodies and beds are surrounded by stolen household items and hundreds of bullet and shrapnel shells.
A wedding dress and baby photos sit among the used ammunition.
The remnants of life ripped out of the surrounding homes and discarded.
We walk into a family home north of the bridge in Bahri and see what fills the houses instead.
Everything is turned over – couches, toy cars, roller skates, dishes.
Even the electric cables are ripped out of the walls.
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Inside the ‘world’s worst’ looting campaign
The corner of the living room is burnt by the wood broken off the antique furniture.
The clothes, cushions and anything of little monetary value are dumped in the centre of the room into a rubbish heap.
Shells boom as we leave the wreckage of the home and motorcycles with steely-eyed army soldiers whizz by on their way to the nearest front.
A military victory may be imminent in Sudan’s capital but a long road to restoration and recovery still lies ahead.
You can watch a special programme on Sudan tonight on The World with Yalda Hakim from 9pm on Sky News.
Yousra Elbagir reports from Khartoum North with camera Garwen McLuckie and producers Nkululeko Zulu and Chris Cunningham
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