“No-one slept in Syria last night… no Syrian abroad slept,” Rania Kataf, who runs the Humans of Damascus Facebook page, said.

“The whole community was holding their phones waiting for the final news.

“How do I feel? Overwhelmed.. We all feel like we’ve been under water, literally, for thirteen years, and we all just took a breath.

“And I know that there are so many people who are much older than me who have been through too much.”

She said she had “mixed feelings” since the offensive by rebel groups began, but that she was no longer afraid.

In the past, she said, she had been “scared of sharing an opinion I was so scared of even putting a like, putting a heart on someone from the opposition.”