Insurgents gained control after only a day of fighting, leaving President Bashar al-Assad's 24-year rule dangling by a thread as rebels marched on Damascus.

The US Department of Justice charged two former Syrian Air Force intelligence officials with committing war crimes against US citizens and others during the Syrian civil war. The indictment, filed in November,

The Kremlin confirmed on Dec. 11 that longtime Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad had fled to Moscow after rebels took the capital city of Damascus in a lightning offensive that shocked the world. Assad’s exile in Russia comes as little surprise.

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?

NBC News' Richard Engel reports from inside one of Syria's most notorious prisons, Saydnaya military prison nicknamed "the human slaughterhouse." Thousands of people in Syria have rushed to the country's prisons after the fall of the Assad regime searching for any trace of loved ones they feared had disappeared into their unseen depths.