Syria: state television reports weakness of ruler Assad

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Battered? Bashar al-Assad, ruler in the civil war country Syria, here at a government meeting to contain the coronavirus in May 2020

SANA / via REUTERS

Syria's head of state Bashar al-Assad, who has been defending his power in a civil war against numerous rebel groups for more than nine years, has apparently suffered a weakness during a speech to the newly formed parliament in Damascus.

Syrian state television reported on Wednesday afternoon that Assad had to interrupt his speech for a few minutes because of "low blood pressure". Then he could continue speaking normally.

The parliament in Syria does not consist of democratically elected members, but exclusively of those who are loyal to the ruler. There were no live images of the speech, it was recorded and is to be broadcast on state television that evening.

The presidency's official Twitter channel also spread the news of the weakness, along with a photo that apparently shows Assad speaking to parliamentarians.

Assad, 54, has been waging war against his own people since 2011. He is presumably only in power because Russia entered the war in 2015 and has since kept the regime alive militarily.

Russia helped with fighter planes and partly with mercenary troops to bomb the way for Assad's army into the numerous rebel areas.

Assad's soldiers have been able to use chemical weapons in rebel areas on several occasions, and the air force dropped so-called barrel bombs from helicopters over residential areas.

Tens of thousands dead, more than five million on the run

Tens of thousands of people have died and 5.5 million have fled. More than three million people saved themselves from the war in Turkey, hundreds of thousands fled to the neighboring countries of Jordan and Lebanon.

The Syrian capital is currently suffering severely from the Covid-19 pandemic. The state sources gave no information about Assad's health beyond the "low blood pressure". Assad is not aware of any previous illnesses.

His father, dictator Hafiz al-Assad, suffered a heart attack at a comparatively young age. He died in 2000 at the age of 69, and his second oldest son, Bashar, has been in power ever since.

The son continued the father's terror regime; thousands of opponents of the government were imprisoned or murdered under the rule of the Assad family over the past decades.

When uprisings broke out in the aftermath of the Arab Spring in 2011, the rulers reacted immediately with a wave of terror, which spread into conflagration and culminated in the war that continues to this day.

cht / Reuters