U.S. President-elect Donald Trump posted on social media platform Truth Social Sunday, saying that "Assad has fled his country. His protector, Russia ... led by Vladimir Putin, was not interested in protecting him any longer."

He also wrote that Russia “lost all interest in Syria because of Ukraine, where close to 600,000 Russian soldiers lay wounded or dead."

Daniel B. Shapiro, a deputy assistant secretary of defense for the Middle East, said the U.S. presence was “solely to ensure the enduring defeat of ISIS and has nothing to do with other aspects of this conflict,” he said, using an acronym for the Islamic State group.

“We call on all parties in Syria to protect civilians, particularly those from Syria’s minority communities to respect international military norms and to work to achieve a resolution to include the political settlement,” Shapiro said.

Qatar’s foreign ministry spokesman and adviser to the prime minister, Majed bin Mohammed al-Ansari, says participants of the emergency meeting of foreign ministers and top officials from eight countries with interests in Syria, agreed on the need “to engage all parties on the ground and be inclusive in our engagement.”

The late Saturday meeting, hosted by Qatar, included Iran, Saudi Arabia, Russia and Turkey.

Syrians have crowded the Lebanese side of the Masnaa border crossing Sunday waiting to cross back into Syria after the fall of Bashar Assad.

Lebanon’s General Security closed the crossing overnight but reopened it in the morning, allowing Syrians to freely cross out of Lebanon while restricting their entry from Syria into the country.

Syrian state TV briefly continued its programs, with an anchorman calling on all employees at the station to return to work adding that they are safe.

“This is Damascus, the capital of Syria where the gates of freedom have opened for the first time in many years. This is a historic day in Syria’s modern history” the anchorman said Sunday morning.

Crowds gathered in Syria's Damascus on Sunday to celebrate the fall of Bashar Assad’s government with chants, prayers and the occasional gunfire after opposition fighters entered the capital following a stunning advance.

Rami Abdurrahman of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Syrian opposition war monitor, said Assad took a flight from Damascus and left early Sunday. There was no immediate official statement from the Syrian government and Assad's whereabouts remain unknown.

The prime minister of Qatar says he has seen new momentum in Gaza ceasefire efforts since the U.S. presidential election, with the incoming Trump administration seeking an end to the conflict before it takes office.

Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani, a key mediator in the ceasefire efforts, declined to give specifics of the negotiations but told an international conference in Doha that the gaps between the sides are not large.

Lebanon’s government has approved a plan to deploy more troops along the border with Israel, part of the ceasefire deal that ended the Israel-Hezbollah war.

In a rare Cabinet meeting outside of Beirut, held Saturday at a military base in the southern port city of Tyre, the government also approved a draft law to reconstruct buildings destroyed during the Israel-Hezbollah war that broke out in October 2023 and ended with a U.S.-brokered ceasefire last week.

Lebanon’s General Security Directorate said the country is closing all land border crossing with Syria except for a main one that links Beirut with the Syrian capital Damascus.

The decision by the security agency in charge of border crossings came hours after an Israeli airstrike damaged the Arida border crossing with Syria in north Lebanon, days after it was reopened.

A Hamas official says international mediators have resumed negotiating with the militant group and Israel over a ceasefire in Gaza, and that he was hopeful a deal to end the 14-month war was within reach.

Ceasefire negotiations were halted last month when Qatar suspended talks with mediators from Egypt and the United States because of frustration over a lack of progress between Israel and Hamas. But there has been a “reactivation” of efforts in recent days to end the fighting, release hostages from Gaza and free Palestinian prisoners in Israel, according to Bassem Naim, an official in Hamas’ political bureau who spoke with The Associated Press in Turkey on Thursday.