Syrian rebels hand over arms, leave another town

Hundreds of Syrian rebels in a town northeast of Damascus handed in their weapons and boarded buses to leave under an evacuation deal, state media reported on Thursday.

Fighters were to relocate with their families to opposition-held areas in northern Syria, effectively surrendering their town of Dumayr to the Syrian government.

The departure was set to involve 1,500 fighters from the Army of Islam rebel faction with 3,500 of their family members, said the state-run SANA news agency. Their destination was Jarablus, a town shared under Turkish and Syrian opposition control near the Syria-Turkey border.

Dumayr, in the Qalamoun mountains, is a minutes’ drive away from the eastern Ghouta region, a former rebel enclave that came under full government control last week after a driving offensive that culminated in a suspected chemical weapons attack.

Inspectors from the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons were still not able to reach the scene, 12 days after the suspected attack.

The April 7 attack prompted the United States, France, and Britain to strike at suspected Syrian chemical weapons facilities. The three countries said they held the Syrian government and its ally Russia responsible for the attack. Damascus and Moscow denied responsibility.

A UN security team touring the sites of the alleged attack on Tuesday, was shot at and subjected to a blast, said OPCW Director-General Ahmet Uzumcu.