Rebel fighters have set fire to the coffin of Bashar al-Assad’s father in a symbolic moment for Syria as it grapples with what shape the country will take next.

Pictures and videos showed men circling the burning remains in the marble-clad mausoleum that was the last resting place of Hafez al-Assad, who ruled Syria for 29 years.

Other fighters dressed in military fatigues posed holding the flag of the revolution over the charred remnants inside the mausoleum in the village of Qardaha, the Assad family’s ancestral home.

Stepping on Hafez’s coffin, which was later dragged into a car park, one fighter declared it was “revenge for my killed cousins”.