Bombing forces militants to surrender
A source familiar with talks between the groups there and the government said some fighters near Yarmouk refugee camp would be taken to eastern Syria
BEIRUT: Militants in the last area outside the Syrian government’s control near Damascus agreed to surrender on Friday, state media said, after a pounding bombardment overnight and through the morning.
A source familiar with negotiations between the insurgent groups there and the government said that some ighters from the enclave around Yarmouk refugee camp would be taken to eastern Syria, where Daesh controls some territory and others to rebel areas in the northwest.
Earlier on state television, large puffs of smoke could be seen along a row of buildings as an artillery salvo struck home before one collapsed in a cloud of dust, accompanied by the rattle of automatic ire and the sound of distant blasts.
Air strikes and shelling hit the Yarmouk Palestinian refugee camp and Al Hajar Al Aswad area, part of a small enclave divided between warring militants and other rebels south of the capital. The live state television footage of the area showed a plume of dark smoke billowing across one district as guns boom in the distance.
A witness in central Damascus saw air strikes also hitting the area.
International inspectors from the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) who arrived in Damascus nearly a week ago were still waiting early on Friday to visit the site of the suspected poison gas attack.
Physicians for Human Rights, a Us-based rights group, voiced “grave concern” over reports that Douma hospital staff had faced “extreme intimidation” after the area came back under government control to stop them talking about the incident.
Rebels on Thursday began pulling out of Dumayr, an enclave northeast of Damascus, under a surrender deal with the government.
Insurgents in another enclave nearby — Eastern Qalamoun — said they had also agreed to withdraw.
Thousands of civilians, including the ighters’ families, are expected to leave with them for northern Syria before the areas come back under Assad’s rule under deals similar to others carried out across the country as government forces advance.
The United Nations has voiced concern that such “evacuations” involve the displacement of civilians under threat of reprisals or forced conscription. The government denies that. “The UN expects further displacements in the near future to northern Syria from other locations controlled by non-state armed groups where negotiations reportedly are happening,” the world body said in a humanitarian note.
Conditions in the opposition-held pocket of northern Syria where the displaced will go are poor.
After the army’s recovery of eastern Ghouta this month in a ferocious battle that began in February, the surrender of Dumayr and Qalamoun would leave only the pocket in south Damascus outside government control in the area around the capital.
Militant shelling of an adjoining neighbourhood injured ive people, Damascus police were cited as saying early on Friday by state television.
Yarmouk was the biggest camp for Palestinian refugees in Syria before the war.
Although most residents have led, up to 12,000 remain there and in the neighbouring areas under militant or rebel control, said the UN agency that helps them.
Syria and its ally Russia deny using chemical weapons in the assault on Douma. The Western countries say the Syrian government, which now controls the town, is keeping the inspectors out and may be tampering with evidence, both accusations Damascus and Moscow deny.