Thousands of Syrians gathered on Friday at Umayyad Square, the largest in Damascus, to celebrate after the first Muslim Friday prayers following the downfall of former president Bashar Assad.
Ahmad al-Sharaa, formerly known as Abu Mohammed al-Golani, the leader of insurgency that toppled Assad in a lightning 10-day march across the country to Damascus, appeared in a video message in which he congratulated “the great Syrian people for the victory of the blessed revolution”.
“I invite them to head to the squares to show their happiness without shooting bullets and scaring people,” he said.
“And then, after, we will work to build this country and as I said in the beginning, we will be victorious by the help of God.”
Mr Al-Sharaa’s force, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, and its allied insurgents have been working to establish security and start a political transition after seizing the capital early on Sunday.
At the same time, they have tried to reassure a public that is both stunned by the fall of the state that had long ruled with an iron hand and concerned over extremist jihadis among the insurgents.
The Friday prayers have a particular symbolism because in the early days of the anti-government uprising-turned-civil-war in Syria in 2011, protesters would turn out en masse after going to the mosque.
“Unified Syria to build Syria,” the crowd gathered in Damascus’ Umayyad Square chanted.
Some shouted slurs about the former president and his late father, calling them pigs, an insult that would have previously led to offenders being hauled off to one of the feared detention centres of Assad’s security forces.
The crowd included many families with children, and some of the demonstrators had come from far-flung areas of the country, including from Idlib – the long-time rebel enclave in the north west of Syria, for years isolated on the other side of the civil war’s battle lines.
The insurgent groups that toppled Mr Assad in Syria have not made clear their policy or stance on Israel, whose military in recent days has bombed sites all over the country.
Israel says it is trying to prevent weapons from falling into extremist hands, and has seized a swathe of southern Syria along the border with the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights, calling it a buffer zone.
In other developments, Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan said Turkey’s Embassy in Damascus would reopen on Saturday for the first time since 2012, when it closed due to the civil war.
