Fall of Assad and the future of Syria dominate the papers

The fall of Bashar al-Assad and the future of Syria dominates the front pages.

The Financial Times calls the ousting of Assad a "welcome end to a brutal Middle East dynasty" - and a "new chapter". The FT reports on the "euphoria" sweeping the streets of Damascus. Omar Seif, a 24-year-old waiter, tells the paper that, for every one of those years, he's had Assad's "boot" on his neck, keeping him down. "But today? I can breathe for the first time," he says.

The Guardian says the people of Syria are "daring to dream of a better future", after five decades of dynastic rule came to a sudden and unexpected end. It talks of army tanks, that were supposed to stop the lightning rebel offensive, standing empty in front of checkpoints. The paper says that, out of habit, one driver stopped at a checkpoint and rolled down the window. "No more checkpoints, no more bribes," the smiling man tells the Guardian's reporter, before speeding off.

"Downfall of the devil," proclaims the Sun, reporting on what it calls a "free-for-all" by looters grabbing valuables in the presidential palace yesterday. "Louis Vuitton suitcases packed with... souvenirs and trinkets snatched from the first lady's boudoir were seen being wheeled away," according to the paper.

The Daily Express headline talks of "delight in Syria as rebels force Assad to flee to Russia". But it adds that the world is "watching nervously... as players in the powder-keg Middle East vie for supremacy, amid fears that leaderless Syria may erupt again in full-blown civil war".

The Times says that "some of the saddest scenes", repeated around the country, were of elderly women waiting as buses and lorries arrived carrying men freed by rebels from the regime's most feared jails. One woman in Aleppo tells the paper she's heard nothing of her son since 2012. The Times adds that she appeared to be waiting "more in hope than expectation".

The Daily Telegraph's defence and foreign affairs editor, Con Coughlin, writes that the "humiliating collapse" of Bashar al-Assad's brutal regime was a fitting end for a man who he says was "always trying to overcompensate for his evident unsuitability for the role". The paper says world leaders have welcomed Assad's fall, but have warned of the rebels' record of terrorism and human rights abuse.

Other papers also express doubts about Syria's future.

The main headline in the Daily Mail poses the question: "Is worse to come?" Writing in the paper, Mark Almond, from the Crisis Research Institute in Oxford, says that the lawlessness after the fall of Colonel Gaddafi in Libya in 2011 is a "terrible warning from history".

Finally, the Telegraph reports on what it calls the King's surprise at Buckingham Palace for a group of "Coronation Girls" from Canada. The paper says none of them could have imagined that 70 years after attending the late Queen's coronation they would reunite in London and be greeted by the King "beaming from ear to ear". Cup of tea in hand, the paper says, he reminisced about his mother's coronation and even joked about "feeling slightly anxious" about the heavy weight of the crown - and it wobbling - at his own ceremony last year.

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