Syrian rebels hand over arms, leave another town near Douma
Assad steps up efforts to crush last besieged enclaves; Daesh given 48 hours to surrender
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.
Meanwhile, the Syrian government stepped up its efforts on Thursday to retake the opposition’s last besieged enclaves.
President Bashar Al Assad scored a major victory this month by retaking eastern Ghouta, the biggest rebel stronghold near Damascus, putting his forces in by far their strongest position since the early months of the seven-year-old civil war.
The departure was set to involve 1,500 ighters from the Army of Islam 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 Syria-turkey border.
Dumayr, in the Qalamoun mountains, is a 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.
The Army of Islam, which controlled Douma at the time of the attack, surrendered the town to the government days later.
State television showed live footage of buses entering the town of Dumayr, northeast of Damascus, to bring out ighters and their families, while soldiers stood by the roadside.
Twenty buses would be used to transfer about 5,000 people, including 1,500 rebels, to north Syria after they surrendered their heavy weapons, Syrian state TV said.
Dumayr has been covered by an informal ceasefire for years, but its recovery is important for the government because it makes it possible to guarantee the safety of vehicles travelling on the Damascus- Baghdad highway.
Said Saif, a senior oficial with one of the rebel groups in the area, said his group had no choice but to go along with a Russian-backed deal to leave the town, because there were no other outside forces that could guarantee their safety.
“We hope the Russians keep their promises, even though we have no trust in them,” he said.
In the nearby enclave of Eastern Qalamoun, which consists of several towns and an area of hills and has also been covered by an informal ceasefire, rebels said they were also negotiating a withdrawal deal with Russia.
‘Ultimatum’
Separately, the pro-government Al Watan newspaper reported on Thursday that Daesh militants had been given 48 hours to agree to withdraw from an enclave centred around the Yarmouk camp for Palestinian refugee south of Damascus.