The UK welcomes the fall of Bashar Assad’s “barbaric regime” in Syria, the Prime Minister has said as he calls for the restoration of “peace and stability”.
Sir Keir Starmer called for all sides to protect civilians and ensure aid can reach the vulnerable as he responded to the overthrow of the Syrian regime.
Overnight on Sunday, a lightning rebel offensive seized control of Damascus, the Syrian capital, and president Mr Assad is reported to have fled.
The UK Government has been evacuating its citizens over the weekend before the situation reached a crisis point.
The Prime Minister said: “The developments in Syria in recent hours and days are unprecedented, and we are speaking to our partners in the region and monitoring the situation closely.
“The Syrian people have suffered under Assad’s barbaric regime for too long and we welcome his departure.
“Our focus is now on ensuring a political solution prevails, and peace and stability is restored.
“We call on all sides to protect civilians and minorities, and ensure essential aid can reach the most vulnerable in the coming hours and days.”
Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner had earlier told broadcasters the Foreign Office “had a plan to ensure that people were evacuated ahead of what’s happened over the weekend, and we continue to support our UK nationals”.
She did not, however, reveal how many UK nationals were in Syria or had been helped to leave.
The leading insurgent group in Syria is Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), Islamist rebels whose group is banned in the UK.
Ms Rayner said Mr Assad “wasn’t exactly good to the Syrian people”, but suggested she did not want to see Syria move in a radical direction following his regime.
The Deputy Prime Minister said: “Dictatorship and terrorism creates problems for the people of Syria, who have faced so much already, and also destabilises the region.
“That’s why we have to have a political solution where the Government is acting in the interests of the Syrian people.”
HTS is a proscribed group in the UK as the authorities say it should be treated as an alternative name “for the organisation which is already proscribed” under the name al-Qaeda, once led by Osama bin Laden.
A former spy chief said it would be “rather ridiculous” if the UK was unable to engage with HTS because of the ban.
Ex-head of MI6 Sir John Sawers told Sky News HTS was thought of as “too close to al-Qaeda” when he was in post, but added: “I think Abu Mohammed al-Golani, the leader, has made great efforts over the last 10 years to distance himself from those terrorist groups and certainly the actions we’ve seen of Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) over the last two weeks has been those of a liberation movement, not of a terrorist organisation.”
He continued: “So, I think the Home Secretary will be asking MI5 and the joint terrorism assessment centre for a review of the situation about Tahrir al-Sham and whether it should remain on the proscribed entity list.
“It would be rather ridiculous, actually, if we’re unable to engage with the new leadership in Syria because of a proscription dating back 12 years.”
Shadow foreign secretary Dame Priti Patel said the Tories wanted to see the “right kind of outcome, put the Syrian people first, but also look at the sort of governance structures that could occupy Syria going forward”.
Dame Priti said the Government should look at a review of the “security and defence implications as well as the terrorist risks”, adding: “They will have to now assess the threat that HTS poses, immediately for our own interests, as well as for Syria’s interests and the wider region.”
Amnesty International, meanwhile, called for the UK to assist in “launching universal jurisdiction cases against suspected perpetrators” of human rights abuses in Syria.