Those rebels – led by the Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham – must now try to unite a country cleaved apart by more than a decade of civil war, one in which dozens of heavily armed militias and remnants of the old regime linger.

The Syrian government fell early Sunday after rebels entered the capital of Damascus, ending the Assad family’s 50-year rule in the war-torn country. The rebels’ victory concluded a 10-day offensive in which fighters sprinted across the country and seized much of what had been government-held land,

With the mood in Damascus still celebratory, Assad's prime minister, Mohammed Jalali, on Monday agreed to hand power to the rebel-led Salvation Government, an administration based in rebel-held territory in northwest Syria.