A first group of rebels and their families evacuated from the Syrian town of Daraya after four years of government siege have reached opposition-held territory, a monitor said on Saturday. Inside Daraya, which has been surrounded by loyalist forces since 2012 and suffered constant bombardment, tearful residents said final goodbyes, a local rebel told AFP.
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Witnesses saw six buses leaving the town on Friday. Footage on state television showed buses carefully driving past a large group of soldiers through streets lined with rubble.
The 4,000 civilians evacuating under the agreement will be taken to temporary housing centers in the Damascus province, Syria’s state-run SANA news agency said.
The decision to abandon the town, reached Thursday after almost a month of negotiations, appears to have embarrassed both the United Nations, charged by the world community with keeping besieged towns like Daraya alive, and to the International Committee of the Red Cross, which ordinarily plays a lead role in any organized movements of civilians in wartime.
“With less than two kilometers separating Darrya from the outskirts of Damascus, it was one of the closest points rebels ever had to the Syria capital and losing it will certainly undermine any plans the rebels could have to take Damascus”, said CCTV reporter Alaa Ebrahim in Damascus.
As NPR’s Alice Fordham tells our Newscast unit, some civilians “say they’ll flee with the fighters, because they fear the regime”.
There have been previous deals to allow similar evacuations of besieged fighters and civilians, or to let people return to their homes after ceasefires were agreed.
The deal was made between the rebels and the government, which didn’t make the United Nations happy, since they like to be the ones brokering such deals.
Daraya, located just a few kilometres from President Bashar al-Assad’s Damascus palace, was one of the first places to rise up against Assad’s rule and became a symbol of the uprising. It was also the scene of one of the worst atrocities of the war. In August 2012, around 400 people were killed over several days by troops and pro-government militiamen who stormed the suburb after heavy fighting and days of shelling, according to opposition activists.
“We are using this lull in the fighting to get in and see what we can do and obviously see for ourselves what the situation is inside the city”, Dujarric told reporters at United Nations headquarters in NY. “The town is no longer inhabitable, it has been completely destroyed”, he said. The government denies it uses barrel bombs.
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An early rebel stronghold that ended up under siege for a solid four years of the Syrian Civil War, the Damascus suburb of Daraya has finally been evacuated today under a deal between government forces and rebels to resolve the situation, allowing everyone out of the area. It also highlights concerns over the forced displacement of members of the Sunni majority, seen by some as a government policy to strengthen its base and create a corridor made up of its minority supporters. Those who did would be taken to Herjalleh.
