Hours after Islamist-led rebels announced they had captured Damascus and overthrown President Bashar al-Assad, the Syrian opposition flag was raised at the Syrian embassy in Athens on Sunday.
At least three men entered the embassy and unfurled the flag, which was visible dangling from the building’s top, according to the Greek national news agency ANA.
It further stated that three individuals had been arrested and that officers had been dispatched to the scene.
Requests for comment from AFP were not answered by the police.
A man was spotted chanting “dictator” while holding an Assad photograph on the balcony of an embassy.
Syrians who had fled to Greece with the establishment of the Assad administration in 1970 gathered at the embassy to celebrate.
“The autocrat got away.” It is finished. Cardiologist Maarouf Alobeid, who has spent forty years in Greece, declared, “A new dawn rises for Syria.”
“I rushed from my house… The Syrian people’s desire for freedom and democracy is indescribable,” he remarked.
Nader Halbouni, a senior official from the Syrian community in Greece, stated that 24 million Syrians were unable to sleep through the night.
Later Sunday, there would be a meeting of Syrians in Greece.
The majority of the Syrians who fled to Greece during the 2015 mass migrant wave did so to reach Germany and other wealthier European Union countries.
More than 15,000 Syrians currently hold residency cards in Greece, the migration ministry said.
