Thousands return after ceasefire deal
UN says more than 320,000 Syrians have fled their homes after the fighting erupted last month
BEIRUT: Tens of thousands have returned to their homes in southern Syria since a ceasefire deal between Russia and rebels to end more than two weeks of deadly bombardment, a monitor said on Sunday.
The deal was largely holding despite air strikes on two areas that killed four civilians, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitoring group said, as rebel evacuations under the deal were postponed.
President’s Bashar al Assad government is determined to retake control of the key southern province of Daraa bordering Jordan and the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights, seven years after protests there sparked Syria’s civil war.
Since June 19, a deadly bombardment campaign on the province had caused more than 320,000 people to flee their homes, according to the United Nations, many to the sealed border with Jordan.
On Friday, rebels and the government announced a ceasefire deal, providing for opposition fighters to hand over their heavy weapons and paving the way for a regime takeover of the province.
More than 60,000 people have since hit the road from the Jordanian frontier, heading back to their homes in the east or west of the province, the Britain-based Observatory said.
On Sunday, the returns were continuing, the Observatory said, even as government warplanes pounded two areas of the province. Three civilians were killed in air strikes on Um al Mayazeen, just five km north of the Jordanian border, said the Britainbased monitor.
“Syrian forces launched an assault on the village,” Observatory director Rami Abdel Rahman said, two days after they retook control of the key border crossing of Nassib to its south.
Earlier, rebel fire on a Syrian convoy travelling near Um al Mayazeen on the highway from the border had killed several soldiers, Abdel Rahman said, without providing a toll.
A government air strike on the rebel-held half of the provincial capital of Daraa also killed one civilian, he said. On Friday, government forces retook control of Nassib, near which thousands of families had set up makeshift tents for shelter.
Under the ceasefire deal, government forces were to deploy along the frontier with Jordan, while rebels were to hand over their heavy weapons.
Opposition fighters were also given the option of being bused out to rebelheld areas in northern Syria.
But a rebel official said the evacuation of opposition fighters and their families planned for Sunday was temporarily put on hold.
“A hundred buses were supposed to arrive but (the operation) has been postponed to a later date, in around two days,” the official said.
“There was an exchange of fire between both sides and the first (wave) has been postponed.”
An IS group affiliate, which holds a small pocket in the southwest of Daraa, is excluded from the ceasefire deal. The bombardment campaign on rebel-held areas in Daraa since June 19 had killed more than 160 civilians, the Observatory says.