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Syria’s Daraya Evacuated Under Deal, Ending Four-Year Siege
Daraya is the latest rebel-held area to surrender to government troops following years of siege.
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A first group was later reported to have arrived at a housing center in Herjalleh, another suburb west of Damascus, by Syrian state television.
The agreement is regarded as a major defeat for the opposition and has provoked anger among supporters.
It also quoted Darayya’s mayor, Marwan Ubeid, who said that families now in the besieged suburb would be transferred to “temporary residency centers” while roughly 700 gunmen would be moved to the rebel-held province of Idlib after surrendering their medium and heavy weaponry to the Syrian government troops.
Three main rebel groups had been in control of the town ahead of the evacuation deal, namely the Levant Martyr Brigade, the Brigade of the Mother of Believers and the Levant’s Soldiers. All will be told to surrender other armaments to the army.
Government forces moved into the town of Daraya near the Syrian capital on Saturday after rebels and civilians were evacuated following a four-year siege by regime forces, a military source said.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights statement said Daraya is clear of gunmen and under the control of the Syrian army, which was conducting inspections in the city.
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and Russia’s Sergei Lavrov sought on Friday to finalize an agreement on fighting Islamist militants in Syria as the first evacuees left a besieged Damascus suburb under a plan which has aroused the UN’s concern.
As part of the evacuation, civilians will go to another city near Damascus, while fighters will be transported to the northern Syrian province of Idlib.
Inside the town, which has been surrounded by loyalist troops since 2012 and suffered constant regime bombardment, tearful residents said final goodbyes, a local rebel fighter told AFP. Despite worldwide condemnation and intense pressure to relax the blockade, only one food shipment had entered Darayya since June, when a fragile ceasefire deal was forged to allow the delivery of aid.
A United Nations aid convoy carrying medicine but no food had entered Daraya earlier the same month.
The siege in Aleppo, Syria’s largest city, is ongoing.
The United Nations says a small team from the U.N. and the Red Cross are going to a suburb of Damascus which is being evacuated “to meet with all parties and identify the key issues for the civilians”.
The Syrian opposition criticised the evacuation, saying that the worldwide community had failed the people of Daraya.
The writers outline its use against civilians, including a napalm bombing on a hospital that put it “completely out of action”.
Located just southwest of Damascus, Daraya has been pummeled by government airstrikes, barrel bombs and fighting over the years.
Daraya was seen as a symbolic bastion of the uprising that began with peaceful protests against Assad’s government, before degenerating into a war that has killed over 290,000 people. Critics of Assad have accused him and his allies of using starvation tactics to secure the area. “Now, children and adults alike are suffering from severe malnutrition”, it read.
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Anti-regime activists have condemned what they called the forced displacement of Daraya’s inhabitants.