Thousands evacuated to pro-regime Syrian towns
Several thousand residents were evacuated two proregime towns in northern Syria on Thursday, putting an end to one of the longest sieges of the country’s seven-year civil war.
Fuaa and Kafraya in Idlib province were the last remaining areas under blockade in Syria and a rare example of pro-government towns surrounded by rebel forces.
The Shia-majority towns were besieged for three years by rebels and Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), a jihadist alliance led by Syria's former Al-Qaeda affiliate.
Surrounded and bombed by hostile factions, the towns had become a rallying cry for the government and its ally Iran.
A deal was reached Tuesday between regime-backer Russia and rebel-ally Turkey to see the residents taken to government-held territory in exchange for the release of prisoners from regime jails.
On Wednesday morning, barricades on the road leading into the towns were removed to let dozens of buses in, AFP said.
Just after midnight, the buses drove out of Fuaa and Kafraya and on Thursday morning were at the village of Al-Eis, crossing from rebel-controlled territory into regime-held areas in Aleppo province. Armed HTS fighters stood on the roadside as the convoy of evacuees inched past, with pro-government militiamen and civilians sitting solemnly aboard and staring ahead.
Some 6,900 civilians and fighters were evacuated and the two towns were now “entirely empty of residents”, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britainbased monitoring group, said. “As the buses entered regime-held areas, the regime started releasing detainees, as per the deal,” Observatory chief Rami Abdel Rahman said.