SYRIAN rebels have reached the suburbs of Damascus and toppled a statue as Bashar al-Assad holes up in his presidential palace.
Rebels attacking from the south now claim to control the southern neighbourhood of Darayya as they get closer to overthrowing the dictator.
A statue of Hafez al-Assad has been toppled in a Damascus neighbourhood, footage on social media shows
Motorised rebel troops are advancing on Homs
The militants' lightning advance has been unprecedented - seizing key cities, towns, and now parts of the capital as regime collapses.
Locals of some Damascus suburbs said that troops abandoned their stations and dressed in civilian clothes as rebel groups urged Assad's supporters to defect.
A statue of Assad's father Hafez was toppled in Damascus' eastern suburb of Jaramana, footage on social media shows.
Protesters ripped the head off the giant bust, just six miles from the centre of the city, before attacking posters of Assad and demanding security forces leave the area.
Assad's family has fled to Russia and Egypt has asked the tyrant to form a government in exile, the Wall Street Journal reports.
Assad claims to still be in the capital and working, the Syrian state news agency said, as the rebels bear down on him.
The UN Special Envoy for Syria Geir Pederson says the situation in the country is changing by the minute and called for peace talks.
Regime forces have withdrawn from a Syrian Air Force base in the southwest of Damascus as rebel fighters also attack a prison.
It is the first time Assad has been militarily challenged in the city since 2018 after the civil war began in 2011.
His 24-year rule appears to be coming to an end as his own troops flee and the rebels breath down his neck.
Turkish-backed Islamist group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HST) and allies launched an offensive on Assad's government from the northwest corner of the country last week
They quickly captured Aleppo and have continued advancing south - breaching defences and entering the key city of Homs today.
But southern rebels, who are known as the Southern Operations Room, rose up at the same time and struck north in a coordinated offensive with HTS.
Towns across the south have been handed over to local rebels as regime forces withdraw to protect Damascus.
Southern militants took the major southern city of Daraa on Friday evening and allowed government forces to retreat back to Damascus.
Yesterday and today those rebels have continued to capture smaller villages and towns on the road to the capital as government forces withdraw.
Some 2,000 of Assad's troops fled across the border to Iraq.
Rebels now control Syria's border with Israel and almost the entire southwest of the country.
The southern rebels claim to also hold a number of towns in the Damascus countryside.
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