Joyful Syrians have ransacked the former president’s palace and stormed the jails to liberate imprisoned loved ones as Bashar al-Assad’s 50 years of brutal rule came to an end.

In what’s been labelled a major humiliation for Russia, Assad fled to Moscow as Syrian rebels seized the capital Damascus unopposed on Sunday (local time).

The overthrowing of the Assad regime has ushered in a hopeful but uncertain era after 13 years of civil war, poverty and a reign of terror.

With the presidential palace abandoned, Syrians barged through its doors and saw firsthand the true extent of the ruling family’s extravagant lifestyle.

People took selfies and posted videos as they ransacked rooms and made off with TVs and appliances, furniture, crockery and piles of food.

Across town, a warehouse was discovered housing 40 luxury cars — including a Bentley, Rolls Royce and three Ferraris — which also belonged to the Assads.

Amnesty International said 90 per cent of Syrians were living below the poverty line while Assad’s family basked in riches.

As news of the regime’s overthrow spread, emboldened crowds stormed the prisons to set inmates free.

Many thousands of political prisoners were believed to have been behind bars — with many secretly executed.

Families streamed towards the country’s most notorious prison, Sednaya — known as the “human slaughterhouse” — in the hope of finding long-lost loved ones.

Humanitarian group, The White Helmets, said detainees were released and a search was underway for hidden doors and basements where more inmates could be trapped.

Heavy traffic returned to the streets on Tuesday (AEDT) and people ventured out after a night-time curfew, although most shops remained shut.

Rebels milled about in the centre.

The main rebel commander Ahmed al-Sharaa, better known as Abu Mohammed al-Golani, met overnight with Assad’s Prime Minister Mohammed Jalali and Vice President Faisal Mekdad to discuss arrangements for a transitional government, a source familiar with the discussions told Reuters.

Al-Jazeera television reported the transitional authority would be headed by Mohamed al-Bashir, who ran the administration in a small pocket of rebel-held territory before the 12-day lightning offensive that swept into Damascus.

Syria’s banks would reopen on Tuesday and staff had been asked to return to offices, according to a Syrian central bank source and two commercial bankers.

Syria’s currency would continue to be used, they said.

Fighters from the remote countryside milled about in the capital, clustering in the central Umayyad Square before Damascus’ eight-century mosque.

“We had a purpose and a goal and now we are done with it. We want the state and security forces to be in charge,” said Firdous Omar, who said he had been battling the Assad government since 2011 and was looking forward to laying down his weapon and returning to his job as a farmer in provincial Idlib.

The advance of a militia alliance spearheaded by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), a former al-Qaeda affiliate, was a generational turning point for the Middle East.

It ends a war that killed hundreds of thousands of people, caused one of the biggest refugee crises of modern times and left cities bombed to rubble, swathes of countryside depopulated and the economy hollowed out by global sanctions.

Millions of refugees could finally go home from camps across Turkey, Lebanon and Jordan.

Assad’s fall wipes out one of the main bastions from which Iran and Russia wielded power across the region.

Turkey, long aligned with Assad’s foes, emerges strengthened while Israel hailed it as an outcome of its blows to Assad’s Iran-backed allies.

The Arab world faces the challenge of reintegrating one of the Middle East’s central states while containing the militant Sunni Islam that underpinned the anti-Assad revolt but has also metastasised into the horrific sectarian violence of the Islamic State group.

HTS is still designated as a terrorist group by the United Nations, Australia, US, Russia and Turkey, among other countries. It has spent years trying to soften its image to reassure foreign states and minority groups within Syria.

The group’s leader Golani, who spent years in US custody as an insurgent in Iraq but broke with al-Qaeda and Islamic State to align his movement with more mainstream anti-Assad groups, has vowed to rebuild Syria.

“A new history, my brothers, is being written in the entire region after this great victory,” he told a huge crowd at the Umayyad Mosque in Damascus on Sunday.

With hard work, Syria would be “a beacon for the Islamic nation”.

Assad’s prime minister Jalali told Sky New Arabia he was ready to provide documents and assistance for the transfer of power.

The fate of Syria’s army would be “left to the brothers who will take over the management of the country’s affairs”, Jalali said.

“What concerns us today is the continuation of services for Syrians.”

There was looting in the coastal city of Latakia on Sunday but it had subsided on Monday, residents said, with few people in the streets and shortages of fuel and bread.

The Kremlin said it was too early to know the future of Russia’s military bases in Syria but it would discuss the issue with the new authorities.

US-backed Kurdish forces have clashed with Turkey-backed rebels in northern Syria.

A video, verified by Reuters, showed rebels entering the town of Manbij, captured from the Kurdish forces on Monday.

-with AAP