“How many people were displaced across the world? How many people lived in tents? How many drowned in the seas?” the top rebel commander Abu Mohammed al-Golani told a huge crowd at the medieval Ummayad Mosque in central Damascus.

Syrian rebels said earlier in the day that they had ended Assad’s rule, in their first announcement on state television following a lightning offensive that took the world by surprise.

Syria’s army command notified officers that Assad’s regime had ended, a Syrian officer who was informed of the move told Reuters. But the Syrian army later said it was continuing operations against “terrorist groups” in the key cities of Hama and Homs and in Deraa countryside.

Assad, who had crushed all forms of dissent, flew out of Damascus for an unknown destination, two senior army officers told Reuters.

Later in the night, Russian news agencies, citing a Kremlin source, reported that Assad and his family had arrived in Russia and had been granted asylum by the Russian authorities.

The Interfax news agency quoted the unnamed source as saying: “President Assad of Syria has arrived in Moscow. Russia has granted them (him and his family) asylum on humanitarian grounds.”

Al-Golani, leader of the insurgent alliance Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), called for stringent efforts to build the new country.

“A new history, my brothers, is being written in the entire region after this great victory,” the HTS leader said. It would take hard work to build a new Syria which he said would be “a beacon for the Islamic nation”.