Austria will support Syrians who want to return now that rebels have seized Damascus and President Bashar al-Assad has fled, Chancellor Karl Nehammer said on Tuesday. "The fall of the Assad regime is changing the overall situation in Syria.

Najem al-Moussa was delighted when news of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's overthrow first beamed from the television in his tiny Athens apartment. Then came a dreaded thought: what if Assad's fall meant he and his family would be forced to return to the devastated country they had fled nine years before?

Nearly a decade after hundreds of thousands of Syrians arrived in Germany, many are now well-integrated and settled in jobs — and tens of thousands have gained German citizenship.