Syrian rebels, led by the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) group, on Tuesday appointed Mohammad al-Bashir as head of a transitional government that will be in place until March 1.

According to a statement attributed to Bashir, he is the “new Syrian Prime Minister”.

He also said: “The general command has tasked us with running the transitional government until March 1."

On Sunday, the rebels led by HTS, seized the capital Damascus in a lightning offensive, toppling Bashar al-Assad’s regime. Assad fled the country and is believed to be in Moscow with his family.

Until now, Bashir was the head of the rebels’ Salvation Government in northwest Syria.

According to The New Arab, the Salvation Government, with its own ministries, departments, judicial and security authorities, was set up in the Idlib bastion in 2017 to assist people in the rebel-held area cut off from government services.

It has since begun rolling out assistance in Aleppo, the first major city to fall after the rebels began their offensive.

Who is Mohammed al-Bashir?

Bashir is a Syrian engineer and politician who began serving as the fifth prime minister of the self-declared HTS administration, the Syrian Salvation Government, in January.

He was born in Idlib in 1986, according to a CV published by the Salvation Government. He holds multiple qualifications spanning engineering, law, and administrative planning.

He earned a degree in electrical and electronic engineering, specialising in communications, from the University of Aleppo in 2007.

In 2010, he completed an advanced English language course administered by the ministry of education.

In 2021, he obtained a degree in Sharia and law with honours from the University of Idlib. That same year, he also received a certificate in administrative planning and a certification in project management from the Syrian International Academy for Training, Languages, and Consulting, The New Arab reported.

He then worked as an engineer supervising the establishment of a gas plant affiliated with the Syrian Gas Company.

Developments under Bashir

In 2021, following the Syrian uprising against Assad, Bashir left his job at government institutions, joining "the ranks of the revolutionaries in the military field".

Between 2022 and 2023, he served as the minister of development and humanitarian affairs under his predecessor, Ali Keda.

In January 2024, the Shura Council of the Salvation Government elected him as prime minister.

China is deploying its largest navy fleet in regional waters in nearly three decades, posing a threat to Taiwan that is more pronounced than previous Chinese war games, the Taiwanese defence ministry said on Tuesday.

Speaking in Taipei, defence ministry spokesperson Sun Li-fang said the scale of the current Chinese naval deployment in an area running from the southern Japanese islands down into the South China Sea was the largest since China held war games around Taiwan ahead of 1996 Taiwanese presidential elections.

China's military has yet to comment and has not confirmed it is carrying out any exercises, Reuters reported.

China, which views democratically governed Taiwan as its own territory over the island's rejection, had been expected to launch drills to express its anger at President Lai Ching-te's tour of the Pacific that ended on Friday, which included stopovers in Hawaii and the U.S. territory of Guam.

Taiwan's military raised its alert on Monday after saying China had reserved airspace and deployed naval and coast guard vessels.

"The current scale is the largest compared to the previous four," Sun said. "Regardless of whether they have announced drills, they are posing a great threats to us."

Senior ministry intelligence officer Hsieh Jih-sheng told the same press conference there have so far been no live fire drills in China's seven "reserved" air space zones, two of which are in the Taiwan Strait, but there had been a significant increase in Chinese activity to the north of Taiwan over the last day.

The number of China navy and coast guard ships in the region, which a Taiwan security source told Reuters remained at around 90, was "very alarming", and China was taking aim at other countries in the region and not only Taiwan, he added.

China's deployment in the First Island Chain - which runs from Japan through Taiwan, the Philippines and on to Borneo, enclosing China's coastal seas - is aimed at area denial to prevent foreign forces from interfering, Hsieh said.

Syria's former president Bashar al-Assad is in Moscow with his family after Russia granted them asylum on humanitarian grounds, a Kremlin source told Russian news agencies on Sunday, and a deal has been done to ensure the safety of Russian military bases.

Russia's Foreign Ministry said earlier that Assad had left Syria and given orders for a peaceful transfer of power, after rebel fighters raced into Damascus unopposed on Sunday, ending nearly six decades of his family's iron-fisted rule.

"Syrian President Assad of Syria and members of his family have arrived in Moscow. Russia has granted them asylum on humanitarian grounds," the privately-owned Interfax news agency and state media quoted the unnamed Kremlin source as saying.

Interfax cited the same Kremlin source as saying Russia favoured a political solution to the crisis in Syria, where Moscow supported Assad during the long civil war.

The source said negotiations should be resumed under the auspices of the United Nations.

Mikhail Ulyanov, Russia's ambassador to international organisations in Vienna, said on his Telegram messaging channel: "Breaking news! Bashar al-Assad and his family in Moscow. Russia does not betray friends in difficult situations."

Syrian opposition leaders had agreed to guarantee the safety of Russian military bases and diplomatic institutions in Syria, the source told news agencies. But some Russian war bloggers said the situation around the bases was extremely tense and the source did not say how long the security guarantee lasted.

Moscow, a staunch backer of Assad whom it intervened to help in 2015 in its biggest Middle East foray since the Soviet collapse, is scrambling to salvage its position. Its geopolitical clout in the wider region and two strategically-important military bases in Syria are on the line.

A deal to secure Russia's Hmeimim air base in Syria's Latakia province and its naval facility at Tartous on the coast would come as a relief to Moscow.

The Tartous facility is Russia's only Mediterranean repair and replenishment hub, and Moscow has used Syria as a staging post to fly its military contractors in and out of Africa.

Losing Tartous would be a serious blow to Russia's ability to project power in the Middle East, the Mediterranean and Africa, say Western military analysts.

Military presence in doubt 

Influential Russian war blogger "Rybar", who is close to the Russian Defence Ministry and has over 1.3 million followers on his Telegram channel, said the situation around the bases was a serious cause for concern whatever Moscow's official line.

"Russia's military presence in the Middle East region hangs by a thread," Rybar said.

"What anyone decided in high offices is absolutely irrelevant on the ground," he added, suggesting Russian forces at the bases had not taken the initiative to defend their positions in the absence of orders from Moscow.

Russian warships had left Tartous and taken up position off the coast for security reasons, the Hmeimim airbase had effectively been cut off after rebels took control of a nearby town, Kurdish forces had started to block Russian facilities beyond the Euphrates, and Russian positions at an oil facility in Homs had been blocked, Rybar said.

Reuters could not independently confirm Rybar's assertions.

Earlier on Sunday, the Russian Foreign Ministry said in a statement that the two military facilities had been put on a state of high alert, but played down any immediate risk.

"There is currently no serious threat to their security," the ministry said as it announced Assad's departure from office and from Syria.

"As a result of negotiations between B. Assad and a number of participants in the armed conflict on the territory of the Syrian Arab Republic, he decided to resign from the presidency and left the country, giving instructions for a peaceful transfer of power," it added, saying Russia did not participate in those negotiations.

The Foreign Ministry said Moscow was alarmed by events in Syria.

"We urge all parties involved to refrain from the use of violence and to resolve all issues of governance through political means," its statement said.

"In that regard, the Russian Federation is in contact with all groups of the Syrian opposition."