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More Syrian rebels, civilians evacuate besieged enclave
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 stateaffiliated 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 limegreen 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.
Many are unsure if they will ever be able to return.
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.
Fighters loyal to the alQaida-linked Levant Liberation Committee, known by its Arabic acronym HTS, also began evacuating eastern Ghouta on Sunday, according to the Observatory.
Rebels with the powerful Islam Army faction still controlled Douma, the largest town in eastern Ghouta, and the third and last pocket in the eastern Ghouta enclave. A delegation representing the town was in talks with Russia to reach a settlement that would have Russian forces deployed inside.
Charities supporting the medical sector in Syrian opposition areas say evacuees were arriving to Hama, on the road to Idlib, bearing the marks of trauma, malnutrition and other afflictions commensurate with the siege of eastern Ghouta. For four weeks, residents had to hide in overcrowded basements as the government shelled and bombed the region without pause.
The Union of Medical Care and Relief Organizations said children and adults were arriving with intestinal infections, hepatitis, skin diseases and trauma injuries.
The Syrian government is giving rebels and male residents the choice of laying down their weapons and signing up for military conscription or leaving with their families to rebelheld territories. Tens of thousands across Syria have elected to leave with their families instead of serving or risking arrest.
Critics say the evacuations amount to forced displacement that legitimizes the government’s siege tactics. The U.N. and the International Committee of the Red Cross have refused to facilitate the evacuations.
Meanwhile, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said his country’s forces were aiming to take the town of Tel Rifaat in north Syria, after Turkey and allied Syrian opposition forces captured the Afrin region from a Syrian Kurdish militia.