The US launched ‘dozens of precision airstrikes’ in Syria on Sunday after rebels ousted longtime despotic leader Bashar al-Assad.
The strikes were carried out against known ISIS camps and operatives based in Central Syria, according to US Central Command.
This ongoing operation’s objective was to prevent ISIS from taking advantage of the chaos and reorganizing after their attempt at a state collapsed in 2019, according to the Pentagon.
The US military struck 75 targets using war planes, including B-52s, F-15s, and A-10s. So far, there are no indications of civilian life lost.
‘There should be no doubt – we will not allow ISIS to reconstitute and take advantage of the current situation in Syria,’ said General Michael Erik Kurilla. ‘All organizations in Syria should know that we will hold them accountable if they partner with or support ISIS in any way.’
This comes after President-elect Donald Trump said the US should not get involved in Syria’s civil war.
After slamming President Barack Obama‘s supposed capitulation to Russia in the Syrian conflict, he wrote in all caps that the US should have nothing to do with war going forward.
‘Syria is a mess but is not our friend, and the United States should have nothing to do with it. This is not our fight. Let it play out. Do not get involved!’ Trump wrote on Saturday.
The war has been between the Syrian government and various rebel groups, some of which are backed by the United States.
Opposition fighters who have been fighting to depose al-Assad since March 2012 first took over Aleppo, Syria’s second largest city.
This weekend, they stormed into Damascus, the capital city, largely unopposed. They then flooded into al-Assad’s presidential palace, declaring the country free from the ‘tyrant.’
It’s now been confirmed that al-Assad and his family have fled to Russia, a close ally to the war-torn country. The news initially came from Russian state media citing a Kremlin source, but it was later confirmed by Russia’s deputy defense minister Alexander Fomin.
Fomin, who said al-Assad was granted asylum in Russia did not indicate where the deposed leader precise location was.
Al-Assad reportedly fled Syria on a Russian plane. Flight tracking website Flightradar24 showed that a plane from Latakia, west Syria, arrived in Moscow a few hours ago, the BBC reported. Latakia is home to a Russian air force base.
He reportedly left Syria early Sunday while Syrians have been pouring into streets echoing with celebratory gunfire after the stunning rebel advance reached the capital, ending the al-Assad family’s 50 years of iron rule.
‘Maybe he thought he knew that this was coming so kind of tried to take himself and leave everyone else,’ Colonel Philip Ingram, a former British Army intelligence officer, told MailOnline about al-Assad’s move to Russia.
As daylight broke over Damascus, crowds gathered to pray in the city’s mosques and to celebrate in the squares, chanting ‘God is great.’ People also chanted anti-Assad slogans and honked car horns.
In the streets, teen boys picked up weapons that had apparently been discarded by security forces and fired them in the air.
Soldiers and police officers left their posts and fled, and looters broke into the Defense Ministry. Videos from Damascus showed families wandering into the presidential palace, with some emerging carrying stacks of plates and other household items.
The Syrian army withdrew from much of the country’s south on Saturday but later said it was fortifying positions in the Damascus suburbs and in the south.
Syrian rebel commander Hassan Abdul Ghany has also said that insurgent forces have ‘fully liberated’ Syria’s central city of Homs.
More than 507,000 people have died in the over 13-year-long war. Of that number, 164,000 of them were civilians.
Trump has not yet addressed the new state of affairs in Syria and how he’ll deal with the country as part of his foreign policy.
