Residents and rebels began leaving the besieged Damascus suburb of Daraya on Friday, part of an evacuation deal to end one of the longest stand-offs in Syria’s five-year-long war.
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The deal will allow 700 fighters to relocate to rebel-held Idlib, while 4,000 local residents will be transferred to government camps, says the BBC, citing Syrian state media.
After the deal struck late Thursday, Daraya’s rebels began evacuating in government buses on Friday, a process expected to take several days.
In February, around 4,000 people returned to their south Damascus neighbourhood after a ceasefire deal, and in December hundreds of fighters and their families were evacuated from two besieged areas in northern and western Syria.
Other civilians were escorted to shelters in government-controlled suburbs of Damascus.
The rebels said they were forced to agree to evacuate the town because of deteriorating humanitarian conditions.
Syrian Opposition and regime forces had agreed to a truce on Thursday as to evacuate the town, which the pro-regime army has besieged since 2012.
It described the situation in Daraya as “extremely grave” and said it was “tragic” that repeated appeals to lift the siege of Daraya had never been heeded.
“The world is watching”, de Mistura said.
Daraya is located just a 15-minute drive from the capital and lies even closer to the government’s vital Mazzeh air base.
Saudi-owned al-Arabiya TV, which supports the rebels, reported that more than 3,000 people have been killed in Daraya since it came under government siege in 2012.
The Syrian opposition reacted bitterly to the evacuation, saying that the global community had failed the people of Daraya.
During one weekend, opposition activists said more than 200 people were massacred there.
It was “imperative” that its residents be protected and evacuated only voluntarily, he said. “Tomorrow, the rest of the shabab leave”, he said, using Arabic slang for young men.
Once the symbolic heart of Syria’s 2011 uprising against President Bashar al-Assad’s rule, the suburb had become synonymous with the government’s unsparing war on the armed opposition and civilians living under its control.
Daraya only received its first aid convoys in June this year after government ally Russian Federation joined Western powers in setting a deadline for humanitarian access to the besieged area.
According to the United Nations, almost 600,000 live under siege across Syria, most by government forces, although both rebels and jihadists also use the tactic.
But today’s evacuation in Darayya which involves the surrender of rebel forces, underlines the Syrian government’s long-held view that the road to peace goes through local Syrian deals, largely on its terms.
United Nations spokesman Stephane Dujarric said a small team of United Nations and Red Cross aid workers would travel to Daraya “to meet with all parties and identify the key issues for the civilians”.
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Meanwhile, the fate of civilians trapped in the city of Aleppo topped the agenda at Friday talks between US Secretary of State John Kerry and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov in Geneva.
