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Hello and welcome to NewsHour from the BBC World Service.
Coming to you live from our studios in central London, I'm Julian Marshall.
Bashar Al Assad escaped the fate of those other Middle east dictators, Saddam Hussein and Muammar Gaddafi.
The Syrian president managed to fly out of Damascus for Russia, his erstwhile ally, before rebels entered the capital last night.
His departure brought to an end more than 50 years of tyrannical rule by the House of Assad, which turned murderous in 2011 when Syrians began clamoring for change and their uprising morphed into a civil war.
In the course of today's program, we'll hear live from Damascus and from Moscow, where Mr.
Assad has sought refuge.
We'll profile the Islamist leader of the rebel alliance who promised his supporters in the Syrian capital today that he would not exact revenge.
And hear from a Syrian playwright who is among millions who fled abroad.
Will he now be returning home?
But we begin in Damascus and the sons of celebration today at the overthrow of President Assad.
And those celebrations were matched by the satisfaction of what he'd done by one of the fighters.