'This is a happy day' Fighters return home to reunite with families and start rebuilding their lives

This time, the doors of the Syrian state broadcaster were held open for Mohammed Abu al-Zaid. The rebel commander strode into the building, camo-clad and with a pistol on his hip, and greeted the channel's staff. The warm welcome was a far cry from his entrance on Sunday morning, when he stormed the building and announced live on air that Bashar al-Assad's regime had officially fallen.

- William Christou

"I hadn't planned it. I decided in the moments before that I would do it," Zaid, a commander of the Southern Operations Room, said on Monday, sitting in the anchor seat of the state broadcaster's studio. Behind him was the three-starred flag of the Syrian opposition that he had put up in place of the Assad government flag.

He recounted the tale to his uncle Abu Bilal, a rebel fighter who had returned to Damascus from the northern front a few hours before.

"You know, we didn't have that much time to watch the news, we've been a bit busy," Bilal said as he watched a video of his nephew announcing the fall of the 54-year-long Assad regime on his phone.

Bilal was one of thousands of fighters and displaced people who returned to Damascus and its countryside this week, having finished fighting on the frontlines against the Syrian army in Homs two days earlier.

For years, the nearly 4.5 million people living in north-west Syria many of them displaced - had been unable to see their families in government-held territory.

The returning fighters came half a dozen at a time, loaded in the back of lorries. Their journey south was accompanied by cars racing alongside them, honking their horns and waving the Syrian revolutionary flag.