Russia's foreign ministry said in a statement on Sunday that ousted Syrian President Bashar al-Assad had left the country after resigning from office and issuing orders to hand over power peacefully.

The statement said that "as a result of negotiations between Assad and a number of participants in the armed conflict in the territory of the Syrian Arab Republic, he decided to resign from the presidency and leave the country, giving orders for the peaceful transfer of power."

The ministry did not mention Assad's current location in the statement, and stressed that Russia did not participate in any talks regarding his departure.

The ministry said that Russian military bases in Syria were put on high alert, but there was no serious threat to them at the moment, and that Moscow was in contact with all the armed Syrian opposition and urged all parties to avoid any violence.

Earlier, the Flight Radar website, which tracks aircraft, reported that a Syrian plane suspected of carrying Bashar al-Assad left Damascus airport before the opposition entered the capital Damascus at dawn today. The plane initially flew towards the Syrian coastal region, the stronghold of the Alawite sect to which Assad belongs, but then suddenly changed course and flew in the opposite direction for a few minutes before disappearing from the radar map. The armed Syrian opposition announced the fall of the Assad regime and the entry of its forces into the capital Damascus - at dawn today, Sunday - as a culmination of a series of lightning victories it achieved in recent days, one after the other, in Aleppo, Hama and then Homs.

Source: Reuters