Protests against Bashar al-Assad’s government broke out there in 2011.
Advertisement
Daraya’s rebels agreed to evacuate in a deal late Thursday.
The office of U.N. Special Envoy Staffan de Mistura issued a statement “calling for the protection of people being evacuated. and says their departure must be voluntary”.
Agence France Presse reported that most of the first bus passengers were women, children and elderly. Nine buses left Daraya on Friday. We kept holding on for four years to the last breath. “But we will return, our nation”.
Dr. Mohamad Diaa, a 27-year-old general practitioner in Daraya, said he would likely leave Saturday with the rebels heading to Idlib. “Today married civilians and families. Tomorrow, the rest of the shabab leave”, he said, using Arabic slang for young men.
“From there they will continue to the areas they wish to go to”, it said.
The rebel fighter said the decision to evacuate the town had been taken because of deteriorating humanitarian conditions.
“The people here are so scared to leave”, said Malik Tifai, an activist still living in the suburb who was reached by telephone. “It’s hard, but we have no choice”, he said.
Daraya is the largest town in the Western Ghouta countryside, and the second most important stronghold for the rebels in the countryside of Damascus, after Douma, the major rebel bastion east of the capital Damascus. It has been held by a coalition of ultraconservative Islamic militias, including the Martyrs of Islam Brigade.
“The buses which are due to evacuate the rebels and civilians started to enter the city after all obstacles were removed from the roads closed since 2012”, Rami Abdel Rahman, head of Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, told dpa. Last week Daraya’s only hospital was hit, rebels and aid workers said.
The U.N. expressed concerns over this agreement to break the siege.
An estimated 8,000 people have remained in Daraya despite a siege that began in late 2012 and constant government bombardment.
According to the United Nations, almost 600,000 live under siege across Syria, most surrounded by government forces, although rebels and Islamists also use the tactic.
The UN no longer keeps track of the death toll due to the inaccessibility of many areas and the complications of navigating conflicting statistics put forward by the Syrian government and armed opposition groups.
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, left, and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, seen here in July, met in Lake Geneva on Friday to discuss fighting Islamist militants in Syria. It was also the scene of one of the worst atrocities of the war.
Advertisement
While Kerry said this week that technical teams from both sides were close to the end of their discussions, US officials indicated it was too early to say whether an agreement was likely. After meeting off and on with Lavrov for almost 10 hours, Kerry said the two “have achieved clarity” on a path to restore a truce in Syria but details remain to be worked out. “But we are not going to rush to an agreement until it satisfies fully the needs of the Syrian people”.
