Bashar al-Assad attends Eid al-Fitr prayers at Al-Hamad mosque in Damascus on Friday.
AFP/Damascus
Syrian President Bashar al-Assad made a rare public appearance on Friday for holiday prayers at a Damascus mosque, state media reported.
Assad attended morning prayers at the Al-Hamad mosque in northwest Damascus on Eid al-Fitr, the Muslim holiday marking the end of the fasting month of Ramadan, the Sana news agency reported.
He was accompanied by "high-ranking officials from the (ruling Baath) party and from the state," it added.
Photographs published by the news agency showed a smiling Assad surrounded by religious figures.
A photograph published by the president's official Twitter account showed him kneeling in prayer beside other officials.
The mosque's imam, Sheikh Mohammad Sharif al-Sawaf, "prayed to God to save Syria, its leader, its army and its people, and to bring victory against its enemies".
"The Syrian army will continue to defend the country," Sawaf said in his sermon, Sana reported.
Damascus has been largely spared the devastation wrought on other Syrian cities by more than four years of civil war, although there has been periodic mortar and rocket fire by rebels entrenched in the suburbs.
Assad has made few public appearances since the uprising against his rule erupted in March 2011.
British pilots took part in Syria air strikes: official
British pilots have taken part in US and Canadian air strikes against Islamic State group targets in Syria, the defence ministry said on Friday, despite a vote in parliament in 2013 against military action.
"The UK is not conducting air strikes in Syria. But we have a long-standing embed programme with allies, where small numbers of UK personnel act under the command of host nations," the ministry said.
"That has been the case in Syria, although there are currently no pilots operating in this region," it said, adding that the number of pilots involved was fewer than 10.
