Russia has called on Reuters to retract a story claiming that it was \u201chighly likely\u201d that President Bashar al-Assad died in a plane crash while leaving Syria.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Assad left Syria in the early hours of Sunday morning after militant groups led by Hay\u2019at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) stormed the capital Damascus and seized its control.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Flight-tracking website Flightradar24 showed a plane believed to be carrying Assad leaving the Syrian capital and heading in the direction of the Mediterranean Sea, before making a U-turn and disappearing from the map.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Shortly afterward, Reuters reported that \u201cthere was a very high probability that Assad may have been killed in a plane crash as it was a mystery why the plane took a surprise U-turn and disappeared,\u201d citing two anonymous \u201cSyrian sources.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
However Russian media confirmed that Assad had landed in Moscow and been granted asylum. Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova denounced Reuters for spreading \u201cfake\u201d news.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cI wonder if Reuters, which reported on Assad’s \u2018highly likely\u2019 death, will refute itself?\u201d she asked.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Zakharova accused the news agency of spreading the sort of \u201cfakes that the West is so zealously fighting.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Reuters rewrote the story on Sunday evening, removing the paragraph about the supposed plane crash.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In a statement earlier, Russia\u2019s Foreign Ministry said Assad had resigned and left Syria, but it did not provide details on where he had gone.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
President Assad\u2019s departure came after armed militants swept through the country in an offensive that saw them first capture Aleppo in the northwest and then advance south towards the key cities of Hama and Homs before storming into Damascus.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Assad\u2019s exit raises concerns about who will lead Syria, a country that has grappled with years of foreign-backed militancy with rival factions vying for control over different areas of the country.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Russia has called on Reuters to retract a story claiming that it was “highly likely” that President Bashar al-Assad died in a plane crash while leaving Syria. Assad left Syria… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":7006,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"ppma_author":[42],"class_list":["post-7005","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"authors":[{"term_id":42,"user_id":0,"is_guest":1,"slug":"radio-habana-cuba","display_name":"Radio Habana Cuba","avatar_url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&r=g","0":null,"1":"","2":"","3":"","4":"","5":"","6":"","7":"","8":""}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.radiorebelde.cu\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7005","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.radiorebelde.cu\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.radiorebelde.cu\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.radiorebelde.cu\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.radiorebelde.cu\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7005"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.radiorebelde.cu\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7005\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7007,"href":"https:\/\/www.radiorebelde.cu\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7005\/revisions\/7007"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.radiorebelde.cu\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7006"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.radiorebelde.cu\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7005"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.radiorebelde.cu\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7005"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.radiorebelde.cu\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7005"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.radiorebelde.cu\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/ppma_author?post=7005"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}