'Syria freed!': thousands cheer at famed Damascus mosque

Thousands of jubilant Syrians converged on Damascus's landmark Umayyad Mosque for Friday prayers, waving opposition flags and chanting -- a sight unimaginable a week ago before rebels ousted president Bashar al-Assad.

Families with children mixed with armed and uniformed Islamist fighters to celebrate the first Friday prayers since Assad's overthrow, later streaming into the Old City's streets and squares.

The scenes were reminiscent of the early days of the 2011 uprising, when pro-democracy protesters in Syrian cities would take to the streets after Friday prayers -- but not in the capital Damascus, long an Assad clan stronghold.

Former rebel fighters allowed women and children to pose with their assault rifles for celebratory photos, as relieved citizens milled around the square before the mosque, a place of worship since the Iron Age and the city's greatest mosque since the eighth century.

"We are gathering because we're happy Syria has been freed, we're happy to have been liberated from the prison in which we lived," said Nour Thi al-Ghina, 38.

"This is the first time we have converged in such big numbers and the first time we are seeing such an event," she said, beaming with joy.

"We never expected this to happen."

Rebel fighter Mohammed Shobek, 30, came to the city with the victorious Hayat Tahrir al-Sham group (HTS), and posed for pictures with local children with a rose in the barrel of his Kalashnikov assault rifle.

"We've finished the war in Syria and started praying for peace, we started carrying flowers, we started building this country and building it hand in hand," he told AFP.

In 2011, Assad's crackdown on peaceful protesters triggered a 13-year civil war that tore Syria apart, killing more than half a million people and displacing millions more.

- 'Syrian people is one' -

Exhilarated crowds chanted: "One, one, one, the Syrian people is one!"

Many held the Syrian independence flag, used by the opposition since the uprising began.

Dozens of street vendors around the mosque were selling the three-star flags -- which none would dare to raise in government-held areas during Assad's iron-fisted rule.

Pictures of people who were disappeared or detained in Assad's prisons hung on the mosque's outer walls, the phone numbers of relatives inscribed on the images.

At the core of the system Assad inherited from his father Hafez was a brutal complex of prisons and detention centres used to eliminate dissent by jailing those suspected of stepping away from the ruling Baath party line.

War monitor the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said in 2022 that more than 100,000 people had died in the prisons since 2011.

Earlier Friday, the leader of the Islamist rebels that took power, Abu Mohammed al-Jolani -- who now uses his given name Ahmed al-Sharaa -- had urged people to take to the streets to celebrate "the victory of the revolution".

Last month, rebel forces led by Jolani's HTS launched a lightning offensive, seizing Damascus and ousting Assad in less than two weeks.

The group has now named one of its own, Mohammad al-Bashir, as interim prime minister in a post-war transitional government until March 1. On Friday he addressed worshippers at the Umayyad Mosque.

- 'Victory of the revolution' -

Omar al-Khaled, 23, said he had rushed from HTS's northwestern stronghold of Idlib, cut off from government areas for years, to see the capital for the first time in his life.

"It was my dream to come to Damascus," the tailor said.

"I can't describe my feelings. Our morale is very high and we hope that Syria will head towards a better future," he said, adding: "People were stifled... but now the doors have opened to us."

On Thursday, the interim government vowed to institute the "rule of law" after years of abuses under Assad.

Amani Zanhur, a 42-year-old professor of computer engineering, said many of her students had disappeared in Assad's prisons and that she was overjoyed to be attending the prayers in the new Syria.

"There can be nothing worse than what was. We cannot fear the situation," she told AFP, expressing support for a state based on Islamic teachings.

Thousands flocked to the nearby Umayyad Square, raising a huge rebel flag on its landmark sword monument and chanting.

"Let's not discuss details that might separate us now and focus only on what brings us together: our hatred for Bashar al-Assad," said Amina Maarawi, 42, an Islamic preacher wearing a white hijab.