Bashar al-Assad and his family have arrived in Moscow and been granted asylum "out of humanitarian considerations", Russian news agencies are quoting a Kremlin source as saying. Russian state TV also reported the news, which put an end to speculation about the whereabouts of Syria's former president after rebel forces seized control of Damascus.

The Russian president intervened decisively in the Syrian civil war in 2015, propping up the Assad regime, after then US president Barack Obama shied away from taking tough action against it for crossing a “red line” with the use of chemical weapons on rebel-held areas of the country.