AFTER 4 YEARS OF SIEGE, SYRIAN TOWN DARAYA EVACUATED

BEIRUT: Besieged residents and rebels began leaving the Damascus suburb of Daraya on Friday, Reuters witnesses said, as an evacuation to end one of the longest stand-offs in Syria’s five-year war began.

Insurgents and government forces agreed a deal on Thursday to evacuate the town, which the Syrian army has surrounded since 2012. The UN said only one shipment of aid has reached the area since then.

A Reuters witness saw six buses leaving the town. Footage on state television showed buses carefully driving past a large group of soldiers through streets lined with rubble.

Peeping from the window of one of the vehicles was a small child no older than four or five, too young to remember life before the siege.

A first group was later reported to have arrived at a housing centre in Herjalleh, another suburb west of Damascus, by Syrian state television.

A Syrian Army general told reporters in Daraya that in total around 700 fighters and 4,000 civilians would be evacuated by Saturday.

Two Free Syria Army rebel groups, the Shuhada al-Islam and Ajnad al-Sham, will travel to Idlib, a rebel stronghold in northwest Syria, on Saturday, said an emailed statement from the rebel factions in the south.

The plight of civilians in Daraya and other besieged areas has long been of concern to the United Nations, which has condemned the use of starvation as a weapon by both sides in the conflict.

But the United Nations was not consulted on Daraya’s evacuation plan and UN Special Envoy Staffan de Mistura and UN humanitarian coordinator Stephen O’Brien, voiced deep concern about it on Friday.

They said civilians should be evacuated only if their safety could be guaranteed and it was on a voluntary basis.