Syria rebels leave last opposition district in Homs

HOMS (SYRIA)/BEIRUT: The last buses carrying rebel fighters and their families left a besieged district of Syria’s Homs on Sunday, completing a deal to bring the whole city back under government control for the first time since the start of the war.

Several hundred fighters left on Saturday and Sunday in the final phase of the evacuation of insurgents from Al Waer, long besieged by government forces and the last opposition-held neighbourhood in Homs, an early centre of the Syrian uprising.

Reconciliation deals

In what the government calls reconciliation deals, thousands of opposition fighters and their families have left a number of areas in western Syria in recent months, bringing President Bashar Al Assad’s government back in control of the country’s main urban centres. The opposition and the United Nations have criticised the deals as forced displacement of Assad’s enemies often after months or years of siege and bombardment.

One of the rebels leaving Al Waer on Sunday said many of the fighters had come to the district from other areas of Homs, including the Old City, after those areas were retaken by government forces earlier in the conflict. “I don’t want to stay here. I’ll go to Idlib, and want to go onto Turkey and then Europe after that,” he said, without giving his name. Evacuees have mostly headed for insurgentheld Idlib province, or for Jarablus, a town along Syria’s northern border near Turkey.