DAMASCUS: A week after a lightning rebel offensive toppled longtime leader Bashar Al-Assad, the United Nations special envoy for Syria on Sunday called for justice to prevail, not revenge. Syrians are only now beginning to scratch the surface of the atrocities committed, after the former despot fled the country for Russia. “We need to see of course justice and accountability for crimes,” UN envoy Geir Pedersen said after arriving in Damascus. “And we need to make sure that that goes through a credible justice system, and that we don’t see any revenge.”

Pedersen also called for “increased, immediate” aid to war-ravaged Syria, saying it had been through “an enormous... humanitarian crisis”. “We need to make sure that Syria receives increased, immediate humanitarian assistance,” he said. Assad fled Syria last Sunday following an 11-day rebel offensive led by the Islamist group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), bringing to a dramatic end more than 50 years of Assad rule.

It came more than 13 years into the civil war sparked by Assad’s violent crackdown on pro-democracy protests in 2011. The war has killed upwards of 500,000 people and displaced more than half the country’s population. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights on Sunday reported new Zionist strikes near Damascus, after 60 strikes across Syria on Saturday. The Britain-based Observatory, which relies on a network of sources in Syria, reported attacks on Syrian army tunnels and arms depots in the Damir area. The Zionist entity has also ordered troops into a UN-patrolled buffer zone separating Zionist and Syrian forces on the Golan Heights, a move the UN said violated a 1974 armistice.

In the week since the rebels took Damascus, each day has seen more light shed on the depths of the despair visited upon Syria’s people over the past decades. Journalist Mohammed Darwish was one of those held in the so-called Palestine Branch, a jail run by Syria’s feared intelligence services. “I was one of those they interrogated the most,” Darwish told AFP as he returned to the prison years after his ordeal. He said he was questioned “every day, morning and night” for 120 days.

Calm is slowly returning to the streets of Damascus, with dozens of children streaming back to school Sunday for the first time since Assad fled. An official at one school said “no more than 30 percent” were back on Sunday, but “these numbers will rise gradually”. Pupils waited cheerfully in the courtyard of a boys’ high school in Damascus on Sunday morning and applauded as the school secretary, Raed Nasser, hung the flag adopted by the new authorities. In one classroom, a student pasted the new flag on a wall. “I am optimistic and very happy,” said student Salah al-Din Diab. “I used to walk in the street scared that I would get drafted to military service. I used to be afraid when I reach a checkpoint.”

France said a four-strong diplomatic team would arrive on Tuesday to “retake possession of our real estate” as well as “establishing initial contact” with the new authorities and “evaluating the urgent needs of the population”, acting Foreign Minister Jean-Noel Barrot said. A Qatari delegation was in Syria Sunday to meet transitional government officials for talks on aid and reopening its embassy. Unlike other Arab states, Qatar never restored diplomatic ties with Assad after a rupture in 2011.

Turkey was ready to provide military support to Syria’s new Islamist-led government set up by rebels if it requests it, Defense Minister Yasar Guler said on Sunday. Guler said the new leadership should be given “a chance” and that Ankara was “ready to provide the necessary support” if needed, in remarks reported by Turkish media.

On Sunday, Syrian Christians attended their first church service since Assad’s fall. Streets in the heavily Christian Damascus neighborhood of Bab Touma filled with worshippers returning from church on Sunday morning but some struck a note of caution. “We’re scared, we’re still scared,” said local resident Maha Barsa after attending Mass at the local Greek Melkite Catholic church. Barsa said she had barely left her home since HTS took over one week ago, though she said that nothing had happened to warrant her concern, adding: “Things are ambiguous.”

In the coastal city of Latakia, long an Assad stronghold, Lina Akhras, a parish council secretary at the St George Greek Orthodox Cathedral, said on Sunday that Christians had been “comfortable” under his rule in terms of freedom of belief but that they just wanted to live in peace and harmony. “(Assad’s fall) happened all of a sudden, we didn’t know what to expect... Thank God, we received a lot of assurances and we saw that members of the (HTS) committee reached out to our priest,” she told Reuters. “God willing, we will return to our previous lives and live in our beautiful Syria,” Akhras added.

Pubs and stores selling alcohol in Damascus initially closed following the rebel victory, but are now tentatively reopening. The landlord of one Damascus bar said the rebels told him: “’You have the right to work and live your life as you did before’.” – AFP