Syrian rebels bussed out of besieged suburbs

Hundreds of Syrian rebels and civilians have been bussed out of a second pocket of the besieged eastern Ghouta suburbs of Damascus after rebels agreed to leave several towns and villages after years of siege and weeks of heavy bombardment.

Close to 900 people were evacuated from the southernmost of three eastern Ghouta pockets yesterday following about 1,000 fighters, family members and other civilians who departed late Saturday.

They left in a fleet of buses, including the Slimegreen municipal vehicles that have come to symbolise defeat for the Syrian opposition and the steady rearrangement of Syria’s population.

The evacuation is modelled on others in which rebels have surrendered swathes of territory around the capital and other major cities after the bombardment at the hands of President Bashar Assad’s forces. Some 7,000 people also left the town of Harasta bound for the rebel-held Idlib province in northern Syria.