Hello and welcome to Newsar from the BBC World Service.

Come in 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 clamouring 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.

It's almost like a dream. It's like a dream. I need someone to wake me up. What great joy for the people.

There is love as if they were waiting for a long time for us to liberate them from this dirt of a regime.

Well, a few hours after rebels entered Damascus,

the Syrian Prime Minister,

Mohammed Ghazi al-Jalali,

said he would stay in post

to support the continuance of government.

The rebels had entered Damascus

from the south, from the east and the north.

...