Germany, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, France, Britain and Austria on Monday suspended decisions on Syrian asylum requests and deportations after the fall of President Bashar al-Assad.

Germany took in almost one million Syrians, Europe’s biggest diaspora from the ravaged country, with the bulk arriving in 2015-16 under ex-chancellor Angela Merkel.

Interior Minister Nancy Faeser said “the end of the brutal tyranny of the Syrian dictator Assad is a great relief for many people who have suffered from torture, murder and terror”.

“Many refugees who have found protection in Germany now finally have hope of returning to their Syrian homeland and rebuilding their country,” she said in a statement.

But she cautioned that “the situation in Syria is currently very unclear”.

“Therefore, concrete possibilities of return cannot yet be predicted at the moment and it would be unprofessional to speculate about them in such a volatile situation.”