Key rebel group cedes stronghold to Assad’s forces
BEIRUT — The most powerful Syrian rebel faction on the fringes of Damascus began abandoning its stronghold in the once rebel-held enclave of eastern Ghouta on Monday, opening the way for government forces to secure full control of the area, after seven years of revolt.
The first fighters from the Army of Islam left the town of Douma around midday as part of an evacuation deal that will hand the town to the Syrian government, reported the state SANA news agency.
The rebels were headed to Jarablus, a town in northern Syria where control of the territory is shared between Syrian rebels and Turkish forces.
The Syrian government dispatched more than 50 buses to Douma to take the rebels out, SANA reported. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which monitors the civil war through a network of activists on the ground, also reported the evacuation.
Rami Abdurrahman, the Observatory’s director, said some factions within the Army of Islam oppose evacuating and surrendering Douma to the government of President Bashar Assad.
The deal over Douma would mark the end of a weeks-long push by Assad’s forces to consolidate their control over eastern Ghouta, just outside the capital.
Douma was one of the earliest centers of the antigovernment demonstrations that swept through the country in March 2011. Syrian government forces responded by putting the town and other suburbs around Damascus under siege, bombing hospitals and residential areas, and blocking the entry of food and medical relief.
The most recent Syrian air and ground offensive on eastern Ghouta, supported by Russia’s military, killed at least 1,600 people, according to the Observatory. More than 120,000 others fled their homes and sought safety with the government, according to Russia’s military operation in Syria. Russia is a key backer of Assad.
Over the past weeks, as Syrian forces reclaimed towns and villages in eastern Ghouta, they gave rebels and men of fighting age the choice of accepting amnesty and serving in the Syrian military conscription, or relocating to rebel-held areas in northern Syria. More than 40,000 rebels and their family members chose to relocate, according to the Russian military.
Turkey, with support from rebels, is running its own military operations against a U.S.backed Kurdish militia in northern Syria, which controls territory along the frontier.
Syria’s seven-year bloodletting has left around 450,000 killed. More than 11 million people — about half the country’s prewar population — have been displaced from their homes.