 "TOPSHOT - Rebel fighters stand with the flag of the revolution on the burnt gravesite of Syria's late president Hafez al-Assad at his mausoleum in the family's ancestral village of Qardaha in the western Latakia province on December 11, 2024. AFP")
Syrian rebels on Wednesday vandalised President Bashar al-Assad’s father Hafez’s tomb in the town of Qardaha.
Videos from the scene show rebels standing next to the burning tomb in Assad’s hometown as young people watch it catch fire.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights war monitor told AFP the rebels had set fire to the mausoleum, located in the Latakia heartland of Assad’s Alawite community.
AFP footage showed parts of the mausoleum ablaze and damaged, with the tomb of Hafez torched and destroyed.
Pictures show that Hafez’s coffin might have been dragged out of the grave and set on fire. The mausoleum also houses the tombs of other Assad family members, including Bashar’s brother Bassel, who was being groomed to inherit power before he was killed in a road accident in 1994.
Meanwhile, rebels have appointed Mohammad al-Bashir to be Syria’s new acting president. After taking charge, Bashir said the Islamist-led alliance that ousted President Bashar al-Assad would “guarantee” the rights of all religious groups and called on the millions who fled the war to return home.
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More Shorts“Precisely because we are Islamic, we will guarantee the rights of all people and all sects in Syria,” he said. Bashir called all Syrian refugees across the world to “come back.”
The war has killed more than 500,000 people and forced half the population to flee their homes, with six million of them seeking refuge abroad.
“Mine is an appeal to all Syrians abroad: Syria is now a free country that has earned its pride and dignity. Come back,” he said.
“We must rebuild, be reborn and we need everyone’s help.”
With inputs from agencies