{"id":49442,"date":"2024-12-07T21:20:00","date_gmt":"2024-12-07T21:20:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/gulftimes.ae\/where-is-bashar-al-assad-rumours-swirl-despite-denials-hes-fled-damascus\/"},"modified":"2024-12-07T21:20:00","modified_gmt":"2024-12-07T21:20:00","slug":"where-is-bashar-al-assad-rumours-swirl-despite-denials-hes-fled-damascus","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gulftimes.ae\/?p=49442","title":{"rendered":"Where is Bashar al-Assad? Rumours swirl despite denials he&#8217;s fled Damascus"},"content":{"rendered":"<p> <br \/>\n<\/p>\n<div>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">His office has denied all such reports, saying he&#8217;s still at work in Damascus, but there has been no sign of him.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Syria has remained a divided country, with the deep scars of the years of civil war unhealed, despite the apparent stalemate and status quo that had been in place for around four years until just a week-and-a-half ago.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Assad&#8217;s pariah status had come to an end among his fellow Arab leaders, but no progress had been made within Syria towards building a viable future for its people in the aftermath of war.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">But the presence of President Assad had seemed to be a seal, however unsatisfactory, on the deadly conflict that had raged for years.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">If he is now out of the picture, a power vacuum will re-emerge, with no clear indication of how it will be filled. There is no unified opposition that is in place to take over. The rebel factions have a history of division and internecine fighting.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The group that has spearheaded the new uprising against President Assad has its foundation in the extremism of Al Qaeda. Its leader has tried to reassure other communities in Syria that it will not impose its ideology on them, but they remain understandably apprehensive of what might come.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">There will be wider fears that Syria could plunge into an even more calamitous state, with various factions battling each other for control. In an already desperately unstable and volatile region, that could feed more dangerous unrest.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">But for now at least, many Syrians both inside and outside the county are united by a hope that many felt they might never experience again &#8211; that they might be able to return to their homes, long lost in the bitter war that Assad&#8217;s violent repression of protest and dissent originally triggered.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><br \/>\n<br \/><a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.com\/news\/articles\/czxdd2r2191o\">Source link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>His office has denied all such reports, saying he&#8217;s still at work in Damascus, but there&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":49445,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"content-type":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[4211,4206,3298,4213,1629,4214,232,4212],"class_list":["post-49442","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-top-stories","tag-alassad","tag-bashar","tag-damascus","tag-denials","tag-fled","tag-hes","tag-rumours","tag-swirl"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v21.0 (Yoast SEO v28.5) - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-premium-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Where is Bashar al-Assad? Rumours swirl despite denials he&#039;s fled Damascus - Gulf Times | News by the minute<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Gulf Times: Latest news across the GCC from UAE, Bahrain, Qatar, Oman, Yemen, Saudi Arabia\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.com\/news\/articles\/czxdd2r2191o\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Where is Bashar al-Assad? 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Rumours swirl despite denials he's fled Damascus - Gulf Times | News by the minute","description":"Gulf Times: Latest news across the GCC from UAE, Bahrain, Qatar, Oman, Yemen, Saudi Arabia","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.bbc.com\/news\/articles\/czxdd2r2191o","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Where is Bashar al-Assad? Rumours swirl despite denials he's fled Damascus","og_description":"Gulf News| UAE's Largest News aggregator site","og_url":"https:\/\/www.bbc.com\/news\/articles\/czxdd2r2191o","og_site_name":"Gulf Times | News by the minute","article_publisher":"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/100084981843786","article_published_time":"2024-12-07T21:20:00+00:00","og_image":[{"width":1024,"height":576,"url":"https:\/\/gulftimes.ae\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/12\/713c3270-b4dc-11ef-9834-31ecf05b0f2e.avif","type":"image\/jpeg"}],"author":"gulftimes","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","twitter_creator":"@Gulftimesuae","twitter_site":"@Gulftimesuae","twitter_misc":{"Written by":"gulftimes","Est. reading time":"2 minutes"},"schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Article","@id":"https:\/\/www.bbc.com\/news\/articles\/czxdd2r2191o#article","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/gulftimes.ae\/?p=49442"},"author":{"name":"gulftimes","@id":"https:\/\/gulftimes.ae\/#\/schema\/person\/4c5b0f90aae48bb43165ee6e39ddc977"},"headline":"Where is Bashar al-Assad? Rumours swirl despite denials he&#8217;s fled Damascus","datePublished":"2024-12-07T21:20:00+00:00","mainEntityOfPage":{"@id":"https:\/\/gulftimes.ae\/?p=49442"},"wordCount":316,"commentCount":0,"publisher":{"@id":"https:\/\/gulftimes.ae\/#organization"},"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.bbc.com\/news\/articles\/czxdd2r2191o#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"https:\/\/gulftimes.ae\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/12\/713c3270-b4dc-11ef-9834-31ecf05b0f2e.avif","keywords":["alAssad","Bashar","Damascus","denials","fled","hes","rumours","swirl"],"articleSection":["Top Stories"],"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"CommentAction","name":"Comment","target":["https:\/\/www.bbc.com\/news\/articles\/czxdd2r2191o#respond"]}]},{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/gulftimes.ae\/?p=49442","url":"https:\/\/www.bbc.com\/news\/articles\/czxdd2r2191o","name":"Where is Bashar al-Assad? 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