officer said. Jarmana, where protesters pulled down a statue of Hafez al-Assad, is in the city’s southern suburbs. Soldiers were deserting in the former rebel stronghold of Daraya and in Mezzeh, near a major airbase, residents said. The main rebel group, the Islamist Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, said it had a duty to protect governmental, international and U.N. offices in Syria. In a sign of government forces’ collapse in the east, around 2,000 Syrian soldiers crossed the border into Iraq to seek sanctuary, the mayor of Iraqi border town al-Qaem said. Syrian Kurdish fighters captured eastern Deir el-Zor on Friday, jeopardizing Assad’s land connection to allies in Iraq.