State soldiers press offensive with missile barrage

BEIRUT — Syrian government forces unleashed hundreds of missiles on a rebelheld area near the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights on Sunday, activists said, the latest phase in an offensive to clear southern Syria of insurgents.

The government’s push came after it had secured control of most of Daraa province in an offensive that began in June. On Sunday, the first batch of armed fighters and their families left the city of Daraa, the provincial capital, in buses that will take them to the rebel-held Idlib province in the north.

Similar deals in other parts of Syria resulted in the evacuation of thousands of opposition fighters and civilians — evacuations that the United Nations and rights groups have decried as forced displacement.

Syrian President Bashar Assad said Sunday the success in driving the opposition out of Daraa embodies the will of his army and allied forces to “liberate all of Syrian territories.”

In recent months, backed by Russian air force, the Syrian government has restored control of over 60 percent of previously rebel-held territory across the country.

Assad spoke during a meeting with Hossein Jaberi Ansari, a top official in Iran’s foreign ministry. Assad’s office said the two agreed that the “elimination of terrorism in most of the Syrian territory has laid the most appropriate ground to reach results at the political level” that could put an end to Syria’s war.

Syria’s government refers to all armed opposition groups as “terrorists” and accuses the West of supporting them.

The statement came a day before President Trump and Russia’s Vladimir Putin are to meet in Finland. Syria is expected to feature highly on the agenda. Russia is a major Assad ally.

In Daraa, the evacuation deal will hand over areas held by the rebels for years back to government control. Daraa, which lies on a highway linking Damascus with Jordan, was the cradle of the 2011 uprising against Assad.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said government forces fired more than 800 missiles at an area between northern Daraa and the Quneitra countryside, about 2.5 miles from the frontier with the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights.