Rebels hand over arms, evacuate another town
BEIRUT — Hundreds of Syrian rebels in a town northeast of Damascus handed in their weapons and boarded buses to leave under an evacuation deal, state media reported on Thursday.
Fighters were to relocate with their families to opposition-held areas in northern Syria, effectively surrendering their town of Dumayr to the Syrian government.
The departure was set to involve 1,500 fighters from the Army of Islam rebel faction with 3,500 of their family members, said the state-run SANA news agency. Their destination was Jarablus, a town shared under Turkish and Syrian opposition control near the SyriaTurkey border.
Dumayr, in the Qalamoun mountains, is a few minutes’ drive away from the eastern Ghouta region, a former rebel enclave that came under full government control last week after a driving offensive that culminated in a suspected chemical weapons attack.
Inspectors from the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons were still not able to reach the scene, 12 days after the suspected attack. A U.N. spokesman said discussions were taking place in Damascus with all key parties on security arrangements for inspectors to visit the site of the suspected chemical attack in Douma.
The April 7 attack prompted the U.S., France, and Britain to strike at suspected Syrian chemical weapons facilities. The three countries said they held the Syrian government and its ally Russia responsible for the attack.
Damascus and Moscow denied responsibility.
A U.N. security team touring the sites of the alleged attack on Tuesday, was shot at and subjected to a blast, said OPCW Director-General Ahmet Uzumcu.
Also Thursday, neighboring Iraq launched air strikes inside Syria targeting militants from the Islamic State.