Hello and welcome to NewsHour from the BBC World Service coming to you live from London.

I'm Sean Lay.

Authoritarian governments regard statues as a symbol of political virility.

When people start to attack the symbols, it can be a sign that the substance of political power is draining away.

This was posted on social media on Saturday in Syria,

a video purporting to show a crowd in a southern suburb of Damascus,

the capital, chanting and cheering as a giant bust of Hafas al-Assad, Syria's dictator for 30 years,

and father of the current president Bashar al-Assad, was toppled.

The reaction may be premature, but it's undoubtedly the case that the anti-government offensive,

which began just 10 days ago, has advanced so rapidly across the country

that many observers

believe the balance of power is shifting decisively against the House of Assad, the dynastic

authority which has ruled the country for more than half a century.

Hayat Tharhya al-Sham, or HTS, the group which seized Aleppo in the north-west before taking

Hummer in the middle of this week, is made up of former members of Al-Qaeda and broke

with it back in 2016. A host of reports in the last few hours, not independently verified,

suggests Syrian officials flying out of the city of Homs, with reports that the prison in that city may have passed into rebel hands.

And if Homs were to thaw as Syria's third largest city,

the distance to Damascus, the capital to the south of it, is not that far away.

That was the picture in Syria today.

While the foreign ministers are the country's key allies, Iran and Russia talked in Qatar,

about Syria's future.

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