This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the uk.
To hear the latest news from Syria and the global perspective after the fall of the Assad regime, listen to the Global News podcast and for in depth insights helping you to make sense of the news, Listen to the Global Story.
Just search for the Global News Podcast and the Global Story wherever you get your BBC podcasts.
Planning your next holiday?
Go the dinner to travel way tailor made and hassle free.
Just go smarter.
That's the key to Nata.
Go smarter.
Hello and welcome to a Special edition of NewsHour from the BBC World Service.
Coming to you live from our studios in central London, I'm Julian Marshall and we're going to devote today's program to the fall of of the House of Assad.
The family that ruled Syria so brutally for more than 50 years has been brought down in 11 days by an Islamist led rebel alliance that swept into Damascus overnight.
With President Bashar Al Assad reportedly fleeing the city shortly before its arrival.
It's a development with profound consequences for Syria itself.
Will there be an orderly transition of power and if so, to who?
It also represents a shakeup in strategic alliances.
Russia and Iran were backing President Assad, but in the end cut him loose.
Turkey has been supporting the rebel alliance and stands to gain from Assad's auster, not least in its quarrel with Syria's Kurds.
And then there are the millions of Syrians who fled the country since the start of the Civil War in 2011 who can now entertain the possibility of returning home.
We'll be looking at those issues over the next hour, but we begin in the Syrian capital today and the sons of guns being fired in celebration in the city.
Rebels entered Damascus from the south, from the east and from the north.