In an interview aired on Hizbullah’s television network Al Manar, the group’s chief, Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah, lauded the growing Russian force admonishing that its presence “will drive away the great dangers threatening Syria and the whole region”.
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It will entail the “evacuation of armed and wounded men from Zabadani (between Damascus and the Lebanese border) to Idlib province (in the north) in exchange for the evacuation of 10,000 civilians from the villages of Fuaa and Kafraya to zones controlled by the regime”, he said. The Syrian army has received substantial support from thousands of fighters dispatched from Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, and Lebanon – and most notably fellow Iranian client Hezbollah.
Hizbullah and Syrian rebels have reached an agreement involving a six-month ceasefire in three battleground Syrian towns, a monitoring group said Thursday.
Russian Federation and Iran, long allied in their support of Syrian President Bashar Assad, appear to be extending their partnership into Yemen.
“The failure of America and the worldwide coalition to bring defeat to Daesh was one of the reasons which called or pushed Russian Federation to also come, and to get directly involved”, he said, using an Arabic acronym for Islamic State.
“The civilians and families who wish to stay in Zabadani are allowed to do so”.
United Nations spokeswoman Jessy Chahine told The Associated Press on Friday that the United Nations facilitated contacts between the different parties but would not elaborate on details of the deal.
Putin replied by saying that the Syrian army was too bogged down in its own civil war to deal with fighting against Israel.
However, rebel factions, including the militant Islamist Ahrar ash-Sham and Al Qaeda-affiliated Jabhat al-Nusra, tightened their joint siege of Kefraya and Foua to put pressure on Iran and Hezbollah to ease the offensive against Zabadani.
Shells apparently fired by insurgents hit the village of al-Foua in the northwestern province of Idlib, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said, after rebels blamed government forces for violating the ceasefire by dropping barrel bombs on an area nearby.
Nasrallah said Saudi Arabia shall be held responsible for the tragic stampede incident in Mina, considering the fact that the monarchy has refused any assistance in handling Hajj affairs.
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The Observatory director Rami Abdurrahman, whose group relies on a network of activists on the ground, also criticized attempts to large scale population transfer.
