Pictures emerge of what appears to be a coffin on fire at Hafez al-Assad mausoleum in the family’s ancestral village

The tomb of ousted Syrian president Bashar al-Assad’s father Hafez was torched in his home town of Qardaha, accoding to AFP footage taken on Wednesday. AFP said it showed rebel fighters in fatigues and young men watching it burn.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights war monitor told AFP the rebels had set fire to the mausoleum, located in the Latakia heartland of Assad’s Alawite community. AFP footage showed parts of the mausoleum ablaze and damaged.