ISIS fighters exit Damascus fringe
Cease-fire on outskirts of Syrian capital is said to be holding
BEIRUT — A cease-fire between Syrian government forces and the Islamic State militant group in the southern neighborhoods of Damascus has held for 24 hours, long enough to let fighters leave, a Syrian war monitoring group said Sunday.
The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said buses carrying Islamic State fighters left the Palestinian refugee camp of Yarmouk and the adjacent al-Tadamon neighborhood overnight. A video circulating online showed lines of buses waiting in the camp with their engines running. It was not clear who recorded the video or where the buses were set to go.
Syria’s official state news agency and government officials denied reaching a deal to allow the militants to evacuate Yarmouk and adjacent areas. State-run al-Ikhbariya TV said government forces plan to drive the militants from their remaining strongholds in the area.
The news came as U.S. officials said the State Department unit overseeing the fight against the Islamic State will stay in business for at least six more months.
That decision reverses a plan initiated by then-Secretary of State Rex Tillerson to fold the office of the special envoy to the global coalition into the department’s counterterrorism bureau. Tillerson’s successor, Mike Pompeo, canceled the plan this month, and the office will stay an independent entity until at least December, when there will be a new review, said the officials, who weren’t authorized to discuss the plan publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity.
The office reports directly to the secretary of state and the president, and the planned shift would have undercut its status and the priority of its mission. It could have led to staffing and budget cuts as well as the departure of the special envoy, Brett McGurk. He is now expected to remain in his job at least through the end of the year.
Still, the officials said Pres- ident Donald Trump’s intent to reduce the U.S. military and civilian stabilization presence in Syria has not changed and is, in fact, accelerating. The State Department has ended all funding for stabilization programs in Syria’s northwest.
At least some of the U.S. money for those projects is expected to be redirected to Syria’s northeast and east, where Islamic State fighters remain, the officials said.
On Sunday, activists reported that the U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces, backed by artillery from the U.S.-led coalition, shelled Hajin.
Information for this article was contributed by staff members of The Associated Press.