The fate and whereabouts of former Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad remained unclear Sunday as his ally Russia, which long supported him in office, said he had resigned and left the country.

“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 leave the country, giving instructions for a peaceful transfer of power.” This shared that Russian Foreign Ministry said in a statement. It added: “Russia did not participate in these negotiations.”

Assad had not been pictured since meeting Iran’s foreign minister in Damascus a week ago, when he vowed to “crush” rebels heading into the city.

Islamist rebels said they had overthrown Assad after seizing control of the capital on Sunday, ending his family’s decades-long autocratic rule after more than 13 years of civil war.

There were unconfirmed media reports that Assad visited Moscow late last month as the rebels reached Aleppo, before returning to Syria. The Kremlin declined to comment on the matter at the time, and it is unclear whether Russia has since offered him refuge.

When asked about Assad’s whereabouts, Mohammad Ghazi al-Jalali, the Syrian prime minister, told al-Arabia that he had not been able to speak to Assad since Saturday, although state media claimed that day that Assad was in Damascus remained in office.

Hakan Fidan, Turkey’s foreign minister, said Sunday he believed Assad was “probably outside Syria.”

Attention had focused on a flight that left Damascus early Sunday and disappeared from flight tracking outside Homs. However, it was unclear who was on board and whether they had landed.

The head of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR), a Britain-based monitoring group, had reported that a plane believed to be carrying Assad “left Syria via Damascus International Airport before security forces arrived.” Army have left the facility”.

SOHR’s ​​Rami Abdul Rahman said he had information that the plane was scheduled to take off at 10 p.m. on Saturday. Although there appears to have been no flight at the time, a Syrian Air Force Il-76T cargo plane took off from the airport hours later. Tracking site Flightradar24 showed it flying east from the capital and then northwest before losing altitude near downtown Homs, where the flight transponder signal was lost.

Other reports focused on a flight to Sharjah in the United Arab Emirates that left slightly earlier, but a diplomatic adviser to the Emirati president told reporters in Bahrain he had no information that Assad was in the country.

The Russian claim that Assad was flown from Damascus also led to several conflicting media reports about his destination. Axios reporter Barak Ravid, quoting an Israeli source, claimed that the former president flew to a Russian base in Syria on Saturday evening to flee to Russia.

The Wall Street Journal reported that Assad was already in Moscow with his family on the advice of Egypt and Jordan, while Bloomberg suggested that a self-exile agreement could involve relocating Assad first to an area he controls and then to Tehran.

Moscow, a staunch supporter of Assad, for whom it intervened in 2015 in its biggest push in the Middle East since the collapse of the Soviet Union, is struggling to maintain its position with its geopolitical influence in the wider region and two strategically important military bases in Syria.

Russia operates the Hmeimim air base in Syria’s Latakia province, from which it has carried out airstrikes against rebels in the past, and has a naval base in Tartus on the coast.