Reuters should retract fake Assad ‘plane crash’ story – Moscow

The Western outlet is guilty of spreading the very fakes that it “so zealously” fights, Maria Zakharova has said

Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova has suggested that Reuters should retract a story claiming that it was “highly likely” that Assad died in a plane crash while leaving Syria.

Assad left Syria in the early hours of Sunday morning, as Hayat Tahrir-al-Sham (HTS) jihadists and US-armed Free Syrian Army (FSA) militants stormed Damascus. 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 afterwards, 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.”

After Russia’s TASS news agency confirmed that Assad had landed in Moscow and been granted asylum, Zakharova took to Telegram to bash Reuters for spreading “fake” news.

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“I wonder if Reuters, which reported on Assad's ‘highly likely’ death, will refute itself?” she asked, accusing the agency of spreading the sort of “fakes that the West is so zealously fighting.”

While Reuters did not address Zakharova’s comments, the agency rewrote the story on Sunday evening, removing the paragraph about the supposed plane crash.

HTS forces launched a surprise offensive against the Syrian Army in the northern Idlib and Aleppo provinces late last month, and quickly seized a number of key cities along the road south to Damascus. Government forces put up little resistance, and Russia, which helped Assad regain control of his country from Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS) and a multitude of foreign-sponsored militias and jihadist groups during the civil war, did not commit troops to hold back the assault.

In a statement on Sunday, the Russian Foreign Ministry explained that Assad had decided to relinquish power peacefully following back-channel talks with several opposition groups. “Russia did not participate in these negotiations,” the ministry noted.

Moscow “maintains contact with all Syrian opposition groups,” the ministry added, calling on these groups to abide by UN Security Council Resolution 2254, which calls on all parties to resolve their differences diplomatically. The resolution excluded Jabhat al-Nusra, as HTS was known until 2017.