Ghouta evacuation under way
DEAL REACHED WITH AHRAR AL SHAM WILL SEE THEM LEAVE HARASTA AND HEAD FOR IDLIB
Rebels, their families begin leaving enclave under Russia-brokered agreement |
Syrian rebels and their families began leaving Syria’s Eastern Ghouta yesterday under the first evacuation deal in the shrinking opposition enclave outside Damascus.
The agreement, announced on Wednesday and brokered by regime ally Russia, could empty one of three rebel-held pockets in the region and mark a major advance in government efforts to secure the nearby capital.
It could also increase pressure on rebels to follow suit in the two other opposition-held pockets of the besieged enclave, where tens of thousands of civilians remain trapped under relentless bombardment.
State TV said around 1,130 people, including more than 230 fighters, had boarded buses from the Eastern Ghouta town of Harasta, until now held by the Ahrar Al Sham rebel group.
A military source told AFP the rebels and accompanying civilians had boarded buses and were in a buffer zone, waiting to cross into regime-controlled territory.
Another military source said around 2,000 people are expected to leave in total, including around 700 fighters.
Ahrar Al Sham spokesman Munzer Fares said the evacuations could last several days.
They followed renewed air strikes in Ghouta which killed 20 civilians, according to the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.
Since February 18, a devastating Russian-backed offensive on Eastern Ghouta has sliced the shrinking enclave into three isolated pockets.
On Sunday, Al Assad drove himself to a newly captured battlefront in eastern Ghouta, a demonstration of his seemingly unassailable position in the war that has been going his way since Russia sent its air force to help him in 2015.
The next day rebels responded by sending a rocket deep into Damascus killing 44 — one of the deadliest in recent times.
The deal to surrender Harasta is the first by eastern Ghouta rebels and began yesterday with a prisoner swap.
A Reuters witness at the crossing with Harasta said the army had removed barriers from the old frontline lying across the road into the town to allow the buses to pass.
The Russian Defence Ministry website showed what it said was live footage from the Al Wafideen crossing point from Douma into government areas.
Over a period of several minutes, it showed dozens of people in small groups coming around a corner and trekking along the dirt road past armed soldiers.
Some bore bundles of their possessions, others carried small children or pushed prams. Behind were fields and trees. At one point in the road a man could be seen in a Syrian Arab Red Crescent shirt.
The ferocity of the Syrian army’s offensive in eastern Ghouta has prompted Western condemnation and urgent pleas from United Nations humanitarian agencies for a ceasefire.
For the Harasta rebels, the journey to Idlib is one already well trodden by rebels from other areas surrendered to Al Assad after prolonged sieges and intense bombardments of the kind used against eastern Ghouta over the past month.