The head of a Syrian opposition war monitor said early Sunday that President Bashar Assad left the country for an undisclosed location, fleeing ahead of insurgents who said they had entered Damascus after a stunning advance across the country.  

Syrian opposition fighters said early Sunday local time that they had entered Damascus and residents of the capital reported the sounds of gunfire and explosions. 

Rami Abdurrahman of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights told the Associated Press that Assad took a flight Sunday from Damascus.  Two senior Syrian army officers also told Reuters that Assad flew out of Damascus Sunday for an unknown destination. 

The Syrian army notified officers that Assad’s rule had ended, Reuters reported.  

Syrian Prime Minister Mohammed Ghazi Jalali said early Sunday that the government was ready to “extend its hand” to the opposition and hand over its functions to a transitional government.

“I am in my house and I have not left, and this is because of my belonging to this country,” Jalili said in a video statement. He said he would go to his office to continue work in the morning and called on Syrian citizens not to deface public property.

He did not address reports that Assad had fled. 

The pro-government Sham FM radio reported that Damascus airport was evacuated and all flights halted.

The insurgents also announced they had entered the notorious Saydnaya military prison north of the capital and “liberated our prisoners” there.

Damascus was expected to fall, three U.S. officials had previously earlier told CBS News, after Syrian insurgents surrounded the capital in a swiftly moving offensive that first began Nov. 27. Syrian insurgents also claimed early Sunday to have captured the key central city of Homs. 

Iranian forces who’d been defending Assad had “pretty much” evacuated from Syria, the U.S. officials said earlier Saturday. 

Syrian insurgents reached the suburbs of Damascus on Saturday as part of a rapidly moving offensive that has seen them take over some of Syria’s largest cities, opposition activists and a rebel commander said Saturday.

The advances in the past week were among the largest in recent years by opposition factions, led by a group that has its origins in al-Qaida and is considered a terrorist organization by the U.S. and the United Nations. In their push to overthrow Assad’s government, the insurgents have met little resistance from the Syrian army.

The approaching fighters are led by the most powerful insurgent group in Syria, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, or HTS, along with an umbrella group of Turkish-backed Syrian militias called the Syrian National Army. Both have been entrenched in the northwest.    

For the first time in the country’s long-running civil war, the government had control of only three of 14 provincial capitals: Damascus, Latakia and Tartus.    

Rami Abdurrahman, who heads the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, an opposition war monitor, said insurgents were active in the Damascus suburbs of Maadamiyah, Jaramana and Daraya. He added that opposition fighters on Saturday were also marching from eastern Syria toward the Damascus suburb of Harasta.

A commander with the insurgents, Hassan Abdul-Ghani, posted on the Telegram messaging app that opposition forces have started carrying out the “final stage” of their offensive by encircling Damascus. He added that insurgents were headed from southern Syria toward Damascus.

Ghani said early Sunday local time that insurgent forces had “fully liberated” Homs, Syria’s third-largest city, Reuters reported, as government forces had supposedly abandoned the city. If they have indeed captured Homs, they would cut the link between Damascus, Assad’s seat of power, and the northern coastal region where the president enjoys wide support.  

His chief international backer, Russia, is busy with its war in Ukraine, and Lebanon’s powerful Hezbollah, which at one point sent thousands of fighters to shore up his forces, has been weakened by a yearlong conflict with Israel. Iran, meanwhile, has seen its proxies across the region degraded by Israeli regular airstrikes. The Israel Defense Forces said on Saturday that after armed individuals carried out an attack at a U.N. post in the Hader area, their troops were currently assisting U.N. forces in repelling the attack. 

On Saturday, President-elect Donald Trump commented on the situation on Truth Social, saying, “THE UNITED STATES SHOULD HAVE NOTHING TO DO WITH IT. THIS IS NOT OUR FIGHT. LET IT PLAY OUT. DO NOT GET INVOLVED!”

Three U.S. officials told CBS News that the al-Assad family’s reign that started in 1971 appears to be ending.

“The United States is not going to…militarily dive into the middle of a Syrian civil war,” White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan told an audience at the Reagan National Defense Forum, an annual gathering of national security officials, defense firms and lawmakers at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley, California. “What we are going to do is focus on the American national security priorities and interests.”

He said the U.S. would keep acting as necessary to keep the Islamic State — a violently anti-Western extremist group not known to be involved in the offensive but with sleeper cells in Syria’s deserts — from exploiting openings presented by the fighting.  

How the conflict reignited

Thousands of people were fleeing from the area amid the dramatic escalation in the civil war, which had simmered without major advances by either side for years until the rebels mounted a shock offensive about two weeks ago.

The capture of Homs was a major victory for the rebels, who have already seized the northern cities of Aleppo and Hama, as well as large parts of the south, in a lightning offensive. Analysts said rebel control of Homs would be a game-changer. Aleppo is Syria’s second-largest city. 

HTS leader Abu Mohammed al-Golani told CNN in an exclusive interview Thursday from Syria that the aim of the offensive is to overthrow Assad’s government.

The Syrian army withdrew from much of southern Syria on Saturday, leaving more areas of the country, including two provincial capitals, under the control of opposition fighters, the military and an opposition war monitor said. The redeployment away from the southern provinces of Daraa and Sweida came as Syria’s military sent large numbers of reinforcements to defend Homs. 

The Syrian army said in a statement earlier Saturday that it had carried out redeployment and repositioning in Sweida and Daraa after its checkpoints came under attack by “terrorists.” The army said it is setting up a “strong and coherent defensive and security belt in the area,” apparently to defend Damascus from the south.

Since Syria’s conflict broke out in March 2011, the Syrian government has been referring to opposition gunmen as terrorists.

In the gas-rich nation of Qatar, the foreign ministers of Iran, Russia and Turkey were scheduled to meet to discuss the situation in Syria. Turkey is a main backer of the rebels seeking to overthrow Assad.

Qatar’s top diplomat, Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani, criticized Assad for failing to take advantage of the lull in fighting in recent years to address the country’s underlying problems. “Assad didn’t seize this opportunity to start engaging and restoring his relationship with his people,” he said.

Sheikh Mohammed said he was surprised by how quickly the rebels have advanced and said there is a real threat to Syria’s “territorial integrity.” He said the war could “damage and destroy what is left if there is no sense of urgency” to start a political process.

After the fall of the cities of Daraa and Sweida early Saturday, Syrian government forces remain in control of five provincial capitals — Damascus, Homs and Quneitra, as well as Latakia and Tartus on the Mediterranean coast.

Tartus is home to the only Russian naval base outside the former Soviet Union while Latakia is home to a major Russian air base.

On Friday, U.S.-backed fighters of the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) captured wide parts of the eastern province of Deir el-Zour that borders Iraq as well as the provincial capital that carries the same name. The capture of areas in Deir el-Zour is a blow to Iran’s influence in the region as the area is the gateway to the corridor linking the Mediterranean to Iran, a supply line for Iran-backed fighters, including Lebanon’s Hezbollah.

With the capture of a main border crossing with Iraq by the SDF and after opposition fighters took control of the Naseeb border crossing to Jordan in southern Syria, the Syrian government’s only gateway to the outside world is the Masnaa border crossing with Lebanon.

contributed to this report.

South Korean prosecutors on Sunday detained a former defense minister who allegedly recommended last week’s brief but stunning martial law imposition to President Yoon Suk Yeol, making him the first figure detained over the case, news reports said.

The reported development came a day after Yoon avoided an opposition-led bid to impeach him in parliament, with most ruling party lawmakers boycotting a floor vote to prevent the two-thirds majority needed to suspend his presidential powers. The main liberal opposition Democratic Party said it will prepare a new impeachment motion against Yoon.

However, according to Agence France-Presse, Yoon’s ruling People Power Party said in a statement Sunday that it had “effectively obtained (Yoon’s) promise to step down.”

“Until the president steps down, the president will be effectively excluded from his duties,” it said in the statement, per AFP.

People Power Party leader Han Dong-hoon and South Korean Prime Minister Han Duck-soo were set to meet later Sunday to discuss plans for Yoon’s “orderly retreat”, the party said.

On Sunday, ex-Defense Minister Kim Yong Hyun voluntarily appeared at a Seoul prosecutors’ office, where he had his mobile phone confiscated and was detained, Yonhap news agency reported.

Other South Korean media carried similar reports, saying Kim was moved to a Seoul detention center. The reports said police were searching Kim’s former office and residence on Sunday.

Repeated calls to the Seoul Central District Prosecutors’ Office and the Supreme Prosecutors’ Office were unanswered. An official at the detention facility in eastern Seoul hung up the phone when The Associated Press called.

Yoon accepted Kim’s resignation offer on Thursday after opposition parties submitted a separate impeachment motion against him.

Kim is a central figure in Yoon’s martial law enforcement, which led to special forces troops encircling the National Assembly building and army helicopters hovering over it. The military withdrew after the parliament unanimously voted to overturn Yoon’s decree, forcing his Cabinet to lift it before daybreak Wednesday.

In Kim’s impeachment motion document, the Democratic Party and other opposition parties accused him of proposing martial law to Yoon. Ruling party leader Han Dong-hun made a similar comment on Kim’s role. Vice Defense Minister Kim Seon Ho told parliament that Kim Yong Hyun ordered the deployment of troops to the National Assembly.

The Democratic Party called Yoon’s martial law imposition “unconstitutional, illegal rebellion or a coup.” It has filed complaints with police against at least nine people, including Yoon and Kim, over the alleged rebellion.

In a statement distributed by the Defense Ministry on Wednesday, Kim said that “all troops who performed duties related to martial law were acting on my instructions, and all responsibility lies with me.”

Prosecutor General Shim Woo Jung told reporters on Thursday the prosecution plans to investigate the rebellion charges against Yoon following complaints filed by the opposition.

While the president mostly has immunity from prosecution while in office, that does not extend to allegations of rebellion or treason. It wasn’t immediately clear how the prosecution plans to proceed with an investigation into Yoon.

The Defense Ministry said it has suspended three top military commanders over their alleged involvement in the martial law imposition. They were among those facing the opposition-raised rebellion allegations.

On Saturday, Yoon issued an apology over the martial law decree, saying he won’t shirk legal or political responsibility for the declaration and promising not to make another attempt to impose it. He said would leave it to his party to chart a course through the country’s political turmoil, “including matters related to my term in office.”

Since taking office in 2022, Yoon has struggled to push his agenda through an opposition-controlled parliament and grappled with low approval ratings amid scandals involving himself and his wife. In his martial law announcement on Tuesday night, Yoon called parliament a “den of criminals” bogging down state affairs and vowed to eliminate “shameless North Korea followers and anti-state forces.”

The declaration of martial law was the first of its kind in more than 40 years in South Korea. The turmoil has paralyzed South Korean politics and sparked alarm among key diplomatic partners like the U.S. and Japan.

The scrapping of Yoon’s impeachment motion is expected to intensify protests calling for his ouster and deepen political chaos in South Korea, with a survey suggesting a majority of South Koreans support the president’s impeachment.

Yoon’s martial law declaration drew criticism from his own ruling conservative People Power Party, but it is determined to oppose Yoon’s impeachment apparently because it fears losing the presidency to liberals.

NEW YORK — New York City Police Department divers were seen searching the lake in Central Park on Saturday afternoon. Sources tell CBS News New York they were looking for the weapon used in the deadly shooting of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson earlier this week outside a Hilton hotel in Midtown Manhattan.

The search came one day after police found a backpack in Central Park, which law enforcement officials say they believe belongs to the suspected gunman. Sources told CBS News New York that the backpack contained a jacket, but not the gun police believe was used in the crime. The backpack is now being analyzed at an NYPD forensic lab for possible hair and DNA samples, sources say.

Sources said divers were searching the lake around 3:30 p.m. Saturday. Citizen app video shows police tape on the southern end of the lake in Central Park, in the same area where the backpack was found. Park-goers said they didn’t see officers leave with anything after the dive.

“This corner, like not a big area, but this corner was blocked off with probably five policemen, one van, and then we saw scuba gear and a couple divers getting in, just kind of splashing around, looking only in this area,” a witness named Charlotte D. said.

Police closing in on person of interest in UnitedHealthcare CEO shooting, mayor says

Mayor Eric Adams, who spoke to reporters at a Police Athletic League event in Harlem on Saturday, said police are closing in on finding the person of interest who had been staying at an Upper West Side hostel and was caught on camera without his mask on.

Adams also said police know the suspected gunman’s name, but are not sharing it publicly.

“We don’t want to release that now. If you do, you are basically giving a tip to the person … we’re seeking, and we do not want to give him an upper hand at all. Let him continue to believe he can hide behind the mask,” Adams said.

According to police, the person of interest was seen on camera entering the Port Authority bus terminal in Washington Heights after the shooting Wednesday morning and has now likely left the city.

The investigation is ongoing.