The Syrian government has reached an evacuation deal with fighters from Hay'et Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) to leave the Yarmouk refugee camp in southern Damascus.

The official SANA news agency announced on Monday that the fighters and their families, numbering about 5,000, would be evacuated in two stages, the first of which would see 1,500 people transported to the rebel-controlled Idlib province in northwestern Syria.

The deal is part of a wider agreement between HTS, formerly al-Nusra Front, al-Qaeda's affiliate in Syria, and President Bashar al-Assad's government to surrender heavy and medium military hardware.

Al Jazeera's Zeina Khodr, reporting from Beirut, said the rebel group had to concede to government demands of releasing prisoners and allowing thousands of Syrians from the besieged loyalist towns of Kefraya and Foua to head for government-controlled territory.

SANA reported that these include 85 prisoners, "mostly women, children and elderly", from the rebel-controlled town of Eshtabraq.

"Pro-government forces have long wanted to fully evacuate the predominately Shia towns because that would deny the rebels the ability to pressure Damascus by threatening to target them," she said.

Buses to transport the rebels and their relatives have already begun gathering around Yarmouk near midnight, local news media reported.

Khodr said this was the fourth such agreement in recent weeks and constituted another important win for government forces and their allies.

"Rebels have already surrendered Eastern Ghouta, which was their main stronghold close to the capital, and a pocket of territory in the Qalamoun region, northeast of Damascus," she said.

"In a few days, rebel factions linked to the Free Syrian Army are expected to hand over the districts of Babbila, Beit Sahm and Yalda in southern Damascus in order to stave off a military operation".

Nevertheless, this falls short of securing the entirety of southern Damascus, with a few pockets of territory still under control of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL, also known as ISIS) group.

Government forces have been involved in a two-week-long offensive to recapture the territory, but ISIL units have put up fierce resistance in areas where heavy weapons have proven to be of limited use. </s> AMMAN - A Russian-brokered deal has been reached to evacuate a Syrian rebel group from a town in Eastern Ghouta to opposition-held northwestern Syria in the first such deal in the last remaining rebel bastion near the capital, two opposition sources said on Wednesday.

They said fighters from Ahrar al Sham rebel group in control of the besieged town of Harasta had agreed to lay down their arms in return for safe passage to insurgent-controlled areas and an offer to be pardoned under local reconciliation terms with the authorities for those who want to stay.The Syrian army and allied forces have recaptured 70 percent of the territory that was under insurgent control in the enclave and after weeks of bombardment residents are fleeing by the thousands.The relentless Syrian army assault backed by Russian air power that began last month has killed hundreds of people, according to rescuers and a monitor.The evacuation deals come after years of siege and bombardment that have been a major strategy by the Syrian army to force rebels to surrender and help Syrian President Bashar al-Assad recover all of Aleppo, Homs and other areas. "The deal has been finalized and it could come into effect soon after a ceasefire is announced as early as Wednesday," said one official familiar with the talks that have been going on for several days.It would begin with an evacuation of injured civilians, he added. </s> AMMAN (Reuters) - A Russian-brokered deal has been reached to evacuate a Syrian rebel group from a town in Eastern Ghouta to opposition-held northwestern Syria in the first such deal in the last remaining rebel bastion near the capital, two opposition sources said on Wednesday.

They said fighters from Ahrar al Sham rebel group in control of the besieged town of Harasta had agreed to lay down their arms in return for safe passage to insurgent-controlled areas and an offer to be pardoned under local reconciliation terms with the authorities for those who want to stay.

The Syrian army and allied forces have recaptured 70 percent of the territory that was under insurgent control in the enclave and after weeks of bombardment residents are fleeing by the thousands.

The relentless Syrian army assault backed by Russian air power that began last month has killed hundreds of people, according to rescuers and a monitor.

The evacuation deals come after years of siege and bombardment that have been a major strategy by the Syrian army to force rebels to surrender and help Syrian President Bashar al-Assad recover all of Aleppo, Homs and other areas.

“The deal has been finalised and it could come into effect soon after a ceasefire is announced as early as Wednesday,” said one official familiar with the talks that have been going on for several days.

It would begin with an evacuation of injured civilians, he added.

The predicament of hundreds of rebels trapped in Harasta, one of the main towns in eastern Ghouta, worsened after the army succeeded earlier this month in splintering Ghouta into three besieged zones, cutting off Harasta from other areas.

Last Sunday, the Syrian army had given the rebels of Harasta area an ultimatum to withdraw, state media said.

The Harasta deal will pile pressure on the two main rebel groups - Failaq al-Rahman in the southern pocket and Jaish al-Islam in the northern enclave - to also reach understandings.

They have however publicly said they reject Russia’s offer to leave the enclave.

The most likely option was however the transfer of Failaq al-Rahman and Jaish al-Islam fighters to opposition-held areas in northern and southern Syria respectively, a rebel official familiar with the situation on the ground said.

The defeat in eastern Ghouta would mark the worst setback for the anti-Assad rebellion since the opposition was driven from eastern Aleppo in late 2016 after a similar campaign of siege, bombing, ground assaults and the promise of safe passage out. </s> AMMAN, March 21 (Reuters) - A Russian-brokered deal has been reached to evacuate a Syrian rebel group from a town in Eastern Ghouta to opposition-held northwestern Syria in the first such deal in the last remaining rebel bastion near the capital, two opposition sources said on Wednesday.

They said fighters from Ahrar al Sham rebel group in control of the besieged town of Harasta had agreed to lay down their arms in return for safe passage to insurgent-controlled areas and an offer to be pardoned under local reconciliation terms with the authorities for those who want to stay.

The Syrian army and allied forces have recaptured 70 percent of the territory that was under insurgent control in the enclave and after weeks of bombardment residents are fleeing by the thousands.

The relentless Syrian army assault backed by Russian air power that began last month has killed hundreds of people, according to rescuers and a monitor.

The evacuation deals come after years of siege and bombardment that have been a major strategy by the Syrian army to force rebels to surrender and help Syrian President Bashar al-Assad recover all of Aleppo, Homs and other areas. "The deal has been finalised and it could come into effect soon after a ceasefire is announced as early as Wednesday," said one official familiar with the talks that have been going on for several days.

It would begin with an evacuation of injured civilians, he added.

The predicament of hundreds of rebels trapped in Harasta, one of the main towns in eastern Ghouta, worsened after the army succeeded earlier this month in splintering Ghouta into three besieged zones, cutting off Harasta from other areas.

Last Sunday, the Syrian army had given the rebels of Harasta area an ultimatum to withdraw, state media said.

The Harasta deal will pile pressure on the two main rebel groups - Failaq al-Rahman in the southern pocket and Jaish al-Islam in the northern enclave - to also reach understandings.

They have however publicly said they reject Russia's offer to leave the enclave.

The most likely option was however the transfer of Failaq al-Rahman and Jaish al-Islam fighters to opposition-held areas in northern and southern Syria respectively, a rebel official familiar with the situation on the ground said.

The defeat in eastern Ghouta would mark the worst setback for the anti-Assad rebellion since the opposition was driven from eastern Aleppo in late 2016 after a similar campaign of siege, bombing, ground assaults and the promise of safe passage out. </s> Residents in northwestern Syria evacuated two Shiite villages on Thursday morning after the Syrian government struck a deal to allow them to leave by pledging to release hundreds of rebel prisoners in exchange.

Some 120 buses carrying approximately 6,900 evacuees had left the towns of al-Foua and Kefraya, taking residents to nearby government-held territory in Aleppo province, a monitoring group said.

"The buses have left in the early hours of the morning and the two towns are completely empty now," Rami Abdel Rahman, head of the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights told news agency dpa.

The villages of al-Foua and Kefraya, located in Idlib province, had been under siege for several years by Sunni Islamist rebels operating in the area. The deal to completely evacuate the towns was brokered by Russia, the main ally of Syrian President Bashar Assad, and Turkey, who is backing the Syrian opposition.

Idlib province is home to more than two million people, including Syrian civilians and rebels who had relocated there from other opposition-held territory in other surrender deals.

The government has not provided details on the release of 1,500 rebels from government-run jails, but according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, the deal would also spare Idlib from future military offensives by the regime.

After recently recovering territory from rebels in the southwest, Assad is hoping to recover all of Syria through agreements such as the evacuation deal in al-Foua and Kefraya.

But activists and rights groups warned that such large-scale transfers may amount to forced displacement. The International Committee of the Red Cross demanded that any movement of people must be voluntary.

"Any evacuations, in Syria, or elsewhere, must follow basic humanitarian rules: Civilians can choose to stay or leave. Civilians must be protected against attacks — at all times. Evacuations are temporary — civilians have the right to return," the ICRC wrote on Twitter.

The conflict in Syria broke out in March 2011 with protests against Assad and his government. Since then, the conflict has killed an estimated 500,000 people and driven some 11 million from their homes.

Each evening at 1830 UTC, DW's editors send out a selection of the day's hard news and quality feature journalism. You can sign up to receive it directly here. </s> Thousands of residents from two rebel-besieged loyalist towns in northwestern Syria have been evacuated to government-controlled territory as part of a deal that will see hundreds of detainees released from state-run prisons.

The last remaining residents of the predominantly Shia towns of al-Foua and Kefraya, estimated at 6,000, departed after more than a hundred buses arrived early on Thursday to transport them to government-held territory in Aleppo province.

On Wednesday, rebels from Hay’et Tahrir al-Sham - a group formerly linked to al-Qaeda - and Iran-backed forces reached an agreement to evacuate people in exchange for the release of more than 1,500 civilians and rebels held in state prisons.

Thursday's evacuation began with ambulances ferrying out the sick to a government checkpoint before 121 buses departed the villages, state-run al-Ikhbariya TV said.

The villages of northern Syria's Idlib province - the last major rebel stronghold in the country - had been under siege for more than three years.

A deal for the evacuation of residents from the two Shia-majority towns was first reached in April 2017 but had only partially materialised with only a group of people evacuated to government-held areas.

The April evacuation was halted after a blast killed 150 people, including 72 children.

Iran, which backs the government of President Bashar al-Assad against the mainly Sunni rebels and has expanded its military role in Syria, has long taken an interest in the fate of the Shia residents of the two towns.

In the past two years, thousands of people, mostly from rebel-held areas, have been forced to move to territories controlled by the rebels as part of evacuation deals.

The opposition has consistently maintained that such evacuation deals amount to forced demographic change and deliberate displacement of Sunni populations away from the country's urban centres.

They accuse Tehran of attempting to change the demographics in areas close to Damascus with the goal of partitioning the country.

Another opposition source said the resumption of talks was aimed at deterring a potential military campaign by pro-government forces on the two towns.

Idlib is part of a de-escalation deal - signed by Iran, Russia and Turkey - that calls for the cessations of hostilities between rebel groups and government forces.

The agreement, which initially included Eastern Ghouta in the northern Damascus countryside and Deraa province in the south, has already been broken with government forces, backed by Russian air support, in control of much of the territory. </s> More than 1,000 people quit a rebel-held district of Damascus Monday, its governor said, in the final phase of a deal bringing Syria's government closer to controlling the entire capital.

The evacuations from the northern neighbourhood of Barzeh are part of a so-called "reconciliation" agreement for three opposition-held districts of Damascus.

Under such deals, fighters and civilians are granted safe passage to other rebel-held territory in exchange for an end to bombardment and siege.

The agreement has allowed Syria's government to declare control over the Damascus districts of Qabun and Tishrin, and on Monday the last evacuees left Barzeh.

"The last phase of the reconciliation deal for Barzeh is complete, with the departure of 1,012 people including 455 armed men," Damascus governor Beshr Assaban told state news agency SANA.

"This will allow state institutions to return to the neighbourhood," Assaban said.

The agreement was struck earlier this month and had already seen more than 5,000 people -- nearly half of them rebels -- leave Barzeh in several waves.

Like the thousands who left Qabun and Tishrin, they will head to opposition-controlled territory in northern Syria.

There are now only a handful of areas in Damascus that remain outside government control.

Rebels hold part of the heavily damaged Jobar district in the east, and in the south, the Tadamun and Hajar al-Aswad neighbourhoods as well as the Palestinian refugee camp of Yarmuk are now mostly controlled by jihadists.

The evacuation deals follow a pattern of similar agreements in towns and villages around Damascus, as well as in third city Homs.

The government says the deals are the best way to end the six-year war, but the opposition says this amounts to forced displacement.

Damascus has been insulated from some of the worst violence of Syria's war, which has killed more than 320,000 people since it began with anti-government protests in March 2011.

But the government has made securing control of the last remaining rebel districts in the capital a key priority. </s> Syrian rebel fighters evacuated from the Damascene suburb of Darayya on Friday, government officials and rebel leaders said, ending one of the longest-running sieges in the country’s devastating civil war.

Syrian state news operator SANA reported that “a reconciliation agreement” had been struck in the city of Darayya on Thursday, a short 15-minute drive from the center of Damascus, “so as to empty it of arms and gunmen in preparation for the return of all state institutions and the inhabitants of the city.”

Families now in the besieged suburb will 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, Darayya’s mayor, Marwan Ubeid, was quoted as saying.

An opposition activist in the city who gave his name as Mutaz for reasons of privacy, confirmed the deal in an interview early Friday. He said that roughly 4,000 civilians will be taken to the Damascus suburbs of Qudsaya and Kisweh. The transfers will occur under international supervision, he said.

Later on Friday, a SANA reporter said that the evacuation operation had begun. Aid trucks from the Syrian Arab Red Crescent entered the suburb hours after the deal was struck.

Al-Mayadeen, a Lebanese news channel close to Assad ally Hezbollah, broadcast live images from Darayya showing government troops standing near what it said were 45 green-and-white buses prepared to move out civilians. Meanwhile, officials were checking off names of those fighters who had chosen to leave, while those remaining behind would be evacuated over the next four days, the news agency reported.

The U.N.’s Special Envoy to Syria, Staffan de Mistura, issued a statement Friday saying, “The situation regarding Darayya [was] extremely grave.”

“It is tragic that repeated appeals to lift the siege of Darayya, besieged since November 2012, and cease the fighting have never been heeded,” said Mistura, adding that he was “made aware of the agreement to evacuate the civilians and fighters” overnight.

“The U.N. was not consulted or involved in the negotiation of this agreement. It is imperative that the people of Darayya are protected in any evacuation that takes place, and that this takes place voluntarily.”

He appealed to members of the International Syria Support Group, a coalition of countries, including the U.S. and Russia, working to bring about an end to the war in Syria “to ensure that the implementation of this agreement and its aftermath is in full compliance with international humanitarian law and protection standards.”

Opposition activists uploaded video depicting rebel fighters embracing family members before their departure. Other photos showed women and men dragging their luggage through neighborhoods all but pulverized by almost four years of constant fighting.

The deal marks the end of one of the Syrian civil war’s most punishing standoffs.

Darayya, a suburb once home to 78,000 people and thought to be the site where Paul the Apostle had his conversion on the road to Damascus, was one of the first areas near the capital to join anti-government uprisings and became a byword for opposition to the rule of Syrian President Bashar Assad.

The suburb is also close to Mezzeh military airport, which reportedly houses headquarters of the government’s elite Republican Guards and the much-feared Air Force Intelligence.

In August 2012, Darayya was the site of what U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said was “an appalling and brutal” massacre that killed more than 200 people, many of them civilians, after fierce clashes forced rebel fighters to withdraw to the suburb’s outskirts. Both sides blamed the other for the killings.

Rebel factions seized control of Darayya later that year, but found themselves steadily losing a war of attrition with pro-government forces who mounted an increasingly tight siege on the area. Despite intense lobbying by the U.N., only one food shipment had entered Darayya since June, when a fragile ceasefire deal was forged to allow the delivery of aid.

Meanwhile, activists in the town spoke of frequent bombings by government warplanes, including one they claimed took out the last remaining hospital in the suburb last week.

Images broadcast by both government and opposition supporters hinted at the scale of the destruction within, and of the bitter calculus that would count Darayya a victory for the government in Syria’s vicious civil war; hardly any neighborhood escaped unscathed, with anywhere from 60% to 90% of the buildings damaged or destroyed.

The reconciliation agreement follows similar deals forged in the central city of Homs in May 2014, which saw fighters and their families evacuate the city’s old quarter and move to Idlib.

Opposition supporters took to social media to condemn the agreement; they excoriated rebel factions in the country’s south for not doing more to help break the siege on the city.

Yet rebel activists in Darayya insisted they would leave the city only to fight the government once again.

“We only left to return,” media activist Mohammad Abu Al-Zain said on his Facebook page Friday.

Abu Jaafar Al-Homsi, the nom de guerre of a commander in the Martyrs of Islam Brigade, one of two major factions in the suburb, posted a defiant statement on Twitter, saying the deal had come after “thousands of failed incursion attempts” by pro-government forces.

“We leave the stones of Darayya in the care of Allah … and accompany with us the heroes of Darayya and their rifles,” he wrote.

“Darayya is where the battles are, for no land can contain Darayya.”

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8:30 a.m.: This article has been updated with a report of aid trucks entering the suburb. </s> Syrian rebels and their families were expected to leave a besieged town in the eastern Ghouta suburbs of Damascus on Thursday, in an evacuation deal that will see the town handed over to the government following years of siege.

Rebels released 13 prisoners of war ahead of the evacuation.

The deal is the first such arrangement made for a town inside the beleaguered eastern Ghouta enclave, which has endured one month of relentless shelling and bombardment as the government, backed by its ally Russia, pushed to retake the area after seven years of revolt.

The agreement could serve as a blueprint for other towns in the enclave.

State-affiliated al-Ikhbariya TV cast the deal as a victory for the country. Its correspondent Rabieh Dibeh said 10 buses had crossed into the town of Harasta to transport the "terrorists" — as the government refers to all armed opposition fighters — to a rebel-held province in north Syria. The camera showed dozens more buses waiting to enter Harasta.

Critics say it is a formula for displacement that lets the state choose its citizenry — and expel those opposed to or fearful of President Bashar Assad's authoritarian rule.

Some 6,000 civilians are expected to depart with the militants, some of them family members of the rebels and others activists, and other people afraid of the government's vindictive security services. An unknown number of others have already been forced out of their homes or killed in the government's ferocious campaigns against Harasta and eastern Ghouta leading up to the deal.

The United Nations and the International Committee of the Red Cross are not facilitating the evacuations; they are being done in conjunction with the Syrian Arab Red Crescent.

The deal is modeled after others that have had rebels surrender swaths of territory around the capital and other major cities to the government. In all cases, the arrangements followed indiscriminate campaigns by the government against hospitals, markets, and other civilian targets, driving thousands of civilians out of their homes.

Harasta appeared in ruins in a broadcast from al-Ikhbariya, and apartment blocks in the town looked gutted. Monther Fares, a spokesman for the rebel faction Ahrar al-Sham, confirmed that his group's fighters were preparing to depart.

The government-controlled Military Media Center said 1,500 rebels and 6,000 civilians would leave Harasta on Thursday.

The 13 men released by the Syrian rebels ahead of the evacuation identified themselves to the media as soldiers and civilians attached to the Syrian army, who were captured by rebels in the fighting for Harasta. In the TV footage, many cried in relief, thanking God, the Syrian army, and President Assad for their freedom.

Al-Manar TV, which belongs to the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah, a key Assad ally, said the government released five "terrorists" to rebels, in exchange.

Fares said the rebels agreed to leave because of "civilian pressure" resulting from intensive airstrikes and "warplanes that do not leave the sky," adding that residents of Harasta have spent the last three months inside shelters.

Russia, a military backer of Assad, was the guarantor of the deal, he said.

Also Thursday, civilians streamed out of another part of the eastern Ghouta, continuing a trend that has seen close to 50,000 people flee across lines to the government for safety.

The Russian military said more than 1,000 civilians left rebel-held suburbs of the Syrian capital Damascus on Thursday morning. Maj. Gen. Vladimir Zolotukhin told Russian news agencies in Syria the civilians left through the Wafideen crossing.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitoring group said some 4,000 people departed the besieged town of Douma in the last 24 hours.

An Associated Press journalist in Damascus, Syria and AP writer Nataliya Vasilyeva in Moscow contributed to this report.
Rebels in Qalamoun begin to evacuate after agreeing to surrender the region to Syria's government.