More rebel fighters leave Syria under deals with regime

Morek (Syria): More rebel fighters with their families boarded buses to leave southern Syria under deals with the regime, a war monitor said, after hundreds reached opposition territory in the north.

On Saturday evening, a second bus convoy prepared to leave Quneitra province, the Britainbased Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

State news agency Sana published images of white buses it said were leaving Quneitra’s Umm Batna area on the ceasefire line, watched by men in military uniform.

In neighbouring Daraa province, 19 buses carrying rebels and civilians hit the road north, more than half from the town of Nawa, the Observatory said.

Earlier in the day, an AFP correspondent said around 50 buses carrying opposition fighters and civilians from Quneitra reached the Morek crossing on the edge of northwestern rebel-held Idlib province.

Just over a month into a Russiabacked regime campaign to retake Daraa and Quneitra from rebels, Moscow-brokered surrender deals are paving the way for government institutions to return to nearly all parts of these provinces.

The deals provide for rebels who do not agree to a government takeover to board buses with their families to join other opposition fighters in the north of the country.

Damascus has been determined to retake Daraa and Quneitra, which borders the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights, with Daraa seen as the cradle of Syria’s seven-year uprising.

But the surrender agreements do not include militants, and Russian air strikes on Saturday killed six civilians in an Islamic State group holdout in Daraa province, the Observatory said.

The deadly raids came just a day after strikes in the same area took the lives of 26 non-combatants including 11 children.