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The dismantling of the decades-old apparatus behind the oppressive machine of the Assads, such as the country's army and the ruling Baath party, meant the sacking of hundreds of thousands of people.

At the centre in Damascus, formerly an office of Assad's Baath Party, hundreds of men were thronging to the gate, hankering to be let in.

Assad’s fall ends more than six decades of Baath Party rule that sought to center Syria as a leader in the Arab world, but instead left it corruption-riddled and impoverished.

A strike hit the headquarters of the Baath political party in the densely populated Ras al-Naba neighbourhood on Sunday, according to Lebanon's state-run National News Agency.

The Lebanese Baath Party is a branch of the Syrian Baath Party, headed by President Bashar Al-Assad, and a long-time Hezbollah ally.