Russia has called on Reuters to retract a story claiming that it was “highly likely” that President Bashar al-Assad died in a plane crash while leaving Syria.
Assad left Syria in the early hours of Sunday morning after militant groups led by Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) stormed the capital Damascus and seized its control.
Flight-tracking website Flightradar24 showed a plane believed to be carrying Assad leaving the Syrian capital and heading in the direction of the Mediterranean Sea, before making a U-turn and disappearing from the map.
Shortly afterward, Reuters reported that “there was a very high probability that Assad may have been killed in a plane crash as it was a mystery why the plane took a surprise U-turn and disappeared,” citing two anonymous “Syrian sources.”
However Russian media confirmed that Assad had landed in Moscow and been granted asylum. Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova denounced Reuters for spreading “fake” news.
“I wonder if Reuters, which reported on Assad’s ‘highly likely’ death, will refute itself?” she asked.
Zakharova accused the news agency of spreading the sort of “fakes that the West is so zealously fighting.”
Reuters rewrote the story on Sunday evening, removing the paragraph about the supposed plane crash.
In a statement earlier, Russia’s Foreign Ministry said Assad had resigned and left Syria, but it did not provide details on where he had gone.
President Assad’s departure came after armed militants swept through the country in an offensive that saw them first capture Aleppo in the northwest and then advance south towards the key cities of Hama and Homs before storming into Damascus.
Assad’s exit raises concerns about who will lead Syria, a country that has grappled with years of foreign-backed militancy with rival factions vying for control over different areas of the country.
