Syrian rebels exit second Ghouta locale
Hundreds evacuated from southern pocket
BEIRUT — Hundreds of Syrian rebels and civilians were bused out of a second pocket of the besieged eastern Ghouta suburbs of Damascus on Sunday 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 on Sunday, according to state-affiliated al-ikhbariya TV, following some 1,000 fighters, family members and other civilians who departed late Saturday, as reported by the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.
They left in a fleet of buses, including the lime-green municipal buses that have come to symbolize defeat for the Syrian opposition and the rearrangement of Syria’s population as the government takes back control of cities around the country.
Fighters dressed in fatigues slumped in their seats and hid their faces from roadside news cameras, while children peered out of the open windows.
Many are unsure if they will ever be able to return.
“I’m going to visit the tomb of my father (for the) last time,” tweeted Muhammad Najem, a 15-year-old boy who said he was going to board the buses to Idlib, a rebel-stronghold in northwest Syria.
“We are going on an unknown journey to the refugee camps in Idlib. We don’t know what is our fate there,” said Najem in a separate video tweet.
The evacuation is modeled on others in which rebels have surrendered swathes of territory around the capital and other major cities after years of siege and bombardment at the hands of President Bashar Assad’s forces. They have been helpless against the government’s overwhelming artillery and air power, boosted with support from Iran’s Revolutionary Guard and Russia’s air force.
Rebels belonging to the Ahrar al-sham and Faylaq al-rahman factions began evacuating the central pocket of eastern Ghouta on Thursday. Some 7,000 people left the town of Harasta, bound for Idlib.