Douma stands alone as rebels quit
BEIRUT: Syrian rebels agreed to surrender a second besieged enclave in eastern Ghouta on Friday as their comrades in another insurgent pocket in the area continued their withdrawal after a month-long assault by the army.
It will leave only one remaining rebel pocket in eastern Ghouta – the city of Douma – and put Syrian President Bashar al-assad on the brink of his biggest victory over the insurgents since driving them from Aleppo in December 2016.
His army’s month-long attack on the biggest rebel enclave near Damascus splintered it into smaller besieged pockets, seized most of its area and, according to a war monitor, killed more than 1 600 people.
Insurgents in one of those pockets, the town of Harasta, began withdrawing in a convoy of buses for opposition territory in north-western Syria on Thursday. More buses left on Friday carrying fighters and their family members.
Syrian state television broadcast their departure. From behind a half-drawn curtain, a woman in a headscarf could be seen gazing out through a spider web of bullet holes and cracks in the window of a bus as it prepared to carry her into exile.
A witness near where the buses were gathering said some men had disembarked to pray while women and children walked nearby. Syrian army soldiers fired tracer bullets into the air to celebrate their victory.
Meanwhile, rebels in a second pocket around the towns of Arbin, Jobar, Zamalka and Ein Terma said they had also agreed to leave for the north-west with their families and any other civilians who did not wish to come back under Assad’s rule.
People who wished to stay on would not face prosecution, said Wael Alwan, spokesperson for the Failaq al-rahman group there, adding that the group would also release captured government soldiers.
About 7 000 people would depart in the deal starting yesterday morning, including fighters carrying light weapons, state TV reported. – Reuters