SDF fighters surrounded by civilians in Manbij after liberating the city from ISIS. File photo: ARA News

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Syrian Democratic Forces make new gains in anti-ISIS campaign, capture another district in Raqqa city

US eyes arms for Kurdish YPG fighters in Syria even after Raqqa’s fall

Over 40 killed in airstrike on ISIS-run jail eastern Syria

ARA News

Dozens of displaced civilians from the al-Khafse town and nearby villages in the countryside of Manbij, in northern Syria, gathered on Thursday in Arbaa al-Kabir village and protested against the Syrian government.

The protesters demanded the removal of pro-Assad forces from their villages and called for the intervention of the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF).

The al-Khafse town was taken from ISIS by the Syrian government and the residents were forced to leave due to the clashes and headed to areas controlled by the SDF and the allied Manbij Military Council (MMC).

According to the pro-Kurdish ANHA agency, the residents of the area refused to return to their villages under Syrian government control, accusing the regime forces of looting their houses and threatening the residents.

As a result, dozens of IDPs from al-Khasfe gathered on Thursday demanding the Syrian government to withdraw from their villages, so that they can return home.

“I am from Khafse and we are protesting today because we want to go back home and live in safety, but this will not be possible if the Syrian regime troops do not get out of our villages,” a civilian said. “We ask the SDF and Manbij Military Council to protect our areas.”

“The regime forces are stealing and burning our properties and don’t allow us to go back home and threaten us,” he added.

On Thursday evening, the protestors headed to the Ras Ein al-Hamer checkpoint –controlled by the Syrian government– and asked for a permission to return to their villages. However, the soldiers did not allow them to cross the checkpoint, local sources told ARA News.

Reporting by: Wladimir van Wilgenburg | Source: ARA News

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Join our Weekly Newsletter </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> Dozens of buses on Wednesday entered two government loyalist towns under siege from rebels in the northwest province of Idlib, as part of a deal to evacuate residents to government-controlled areas, according to state news agency, SANA.

Some 6,000 people will leave, emptying out the mostly Shia towns of al-Foua and Kefraya, a commander in the regional alliance that backs Syrian President Bashar al-Assad told the Reuters news agency.

"What are we going to do with our land and property? Oh, my hometown," a 42-year-old who wished to remain anonymous told AFP news agency.

"I pray this will go well."

Rebels from Hay'et Tahrir al-Sham - a group formerly linked to al-Qaeda - and Iran-backed forces agreed to the deal to evacuate people in return for the release of more than 1,500 civilians and rebels in state prisons, sources said on Tuesday.

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

Politics of evacuation

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

Iran, which backs 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 in 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.

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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> 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> 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. </s> AMMAN (Reuters) - Syrian jets on Monday bombed residential areas in the eastern countryside of Damascus killing and injuring dozens in some of the heaviest bombing raids on the main rebel enclave near the capital in months, residents and activists said.

At least 22 people were killed and scores injured after four aerial raids hit a crowded district in the city of Douma, the main urban center of the Eastern Ghouta rebel stronghold to the east of the capital.

Many other bodies were still under the rubble, civil workers said.

The pro-opposition civil defense said on its twitter account that there were 21 raids alone on the other towns of Hamurya, Harasta and Saqba in the besieged Eastern Ghouta.

In the town of Saqba, just south of Douma, at least five people were killed when jets believed to be Russian struck a main market square in the town, two residents said.

Social media footage by the civil defense showed volunteers and civilians carrying wounded on stretchers after they were extracted from under the rubble of destroyed buildings in the once teeming areas.

"We are civilians. Why are they hitting us? Jets are above us. There are no terrorists," said a screaming young man in footage shown on pro-opposition Orient TV.

The Syrian army said on Monday it had hit at the heart of insurgent positions in Jobar, Arbeen and Zamalka and areas in the Eastern Ghouta, knocking down missile launchers and killing scores of "terrorists."

The Syrian army has said it is fighting against foreign financed terrorists who fire mortars on government-held areas in the capital. They deny they target civilians.

The intensive raids followed an offensive begun by the Syrian army and its allies since late February to encircle the rebel-held Barza neighborhood of the capital and cut it off from nearby Qaboun.

The army wants to destroy tunnels in Barza and Qaboun that it says rebels use to provide essential goods to Eastern Ghouta towns that have for years helped the area withstand the siege.

"Today the regime shelled and bombed ... they have not left a place they have not hit. They want to get the tunnels," said Abu Omar, a commander from rebel group Failaq al Rahman.

Government troops, backed by Russian air power and Iranian-backed militias, have been snuffing out pockets of rebellion near the capital, forcing surrender on besieged rebels.

The densely populated rural area east of Damascus known as the Eastern Ghouta has been besieged since 2013.

Several hundred thousand people are believed to be trapped there with the authorities making it difficult for humanitarian aid to be delivered by United Nations organizations.

Residents believe the government aims to push them into an eventual surrender through siege and bombardment that forces them to reach local agreements that guarantee fighters safe passage to other rebel-held parts of the country. </s> BEIRUT/AMMAN (Reuters) - Warplanes bombed rebel-held towns east of Damascus on Wednesday, striking residential areas where Russia had declared a ceasefire less than 24 hours earlier and leaving dozens injured, according to residents, rebels and a monitoring group.

Air raids and artillery hit three towns in Eastern Ghouta, part of Syria's Damascus province, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said. A ceasefire had been agreed in the area until March 20, Russia's Defence Ministry said on Tuesday.

The Syrian air force struck at jihadists linked to a former al Qaeda offshoot in Irbeen, a city north-east of Damascus in Eastern Ghouta, and in al Qaboun, closer to the center of the capital, according to a media unit of Hezbollah, a Damascus ally. There was no immediate comment from the Syrian military.

At least 30 air raids hit the region on Wednesday, along with dozens of artillery rounds and ground-to-ground missiles fired from government-held areas, a rebel and a resident said.

The Syrian army has been closing in on eastern suburbs of Damascus still in rebel hands, such as Qaboun, and seeking to storm neighboring towns in Eastern Ghouta. Air raids and fighting have escalated in recent days, opposition sources said.

The army and its allies are trying to force rebels to agree to truces similar to those that have led to the evacuation of thousands of opposition fighters to northern Syria.

The army has for the last 20 days concentrated its air strikes on Qaboun district, effectively ending a ceasefire that rebels in the area agreed with the Syrian army which had been in place since the end of 2013.

The army suspects tunnels from Qaboun to Eastern Ghouta have become a lifeline for people and rebels in the besieged area, the opposition's largest remaining stronghold near Damascus.

"If they take over Qaboun, the regime will be able to enforce a complete siege of Ghouta," said a fighter from Failaq al Rahman, a rebel group operating in the area called Fahed.

Thousands of civilians have fled Qaboun, a district that had drawn tens of thousands of people escaping from violence elsewhere. They have found refuge in the adjoining Damascene district of Barza, where many families have taken refuge in the streets, public gardens and mosques.

Barza has agreed a full truce with the government that has been in place since 2014. Unlike other besieged suburbs, most of civilians living in Barza can go to the capital to work and to buy food and other supplies.

Before the Syrian conflict began in 2011, more than half a million people lived in Eastern Ghouta. The sprawling mix of urban districts and farmland was once a major economic hub serving the capital, but now its population has dwindled to tens of thousands and continues to shrink. </s> Hundreds of Syrian opposition fighters and their relatives began evacuating a key besieged town in eastern Ghouta on Thursday, marking the first such opposition surrender from the bombed-out region east of Damascus.

The departure of opposition fighters from the powerful Ahrar al-Sham group could serve as a blueprint for other rebels in other towns, bringing the Assad regime closer to recapturing the entire territory following years of siege and relentless bombardment.

Syrian TV broadcast footage showing dozens of white buses that had been parked along a main highway for hours, with opposition fighters and civilians on board, start to drive out in a long convoy. It said among the 1,580 evacuees were 413 gunmen. More are expected to leave in coming days.

As the opposition prepared to depart the town of Harasta, thousands of civilians streamed out of other areas in eastern Ghouta that were still being bombed by the regime. They included dozens of civilians who appeared to be wounded, some hobbling on crutches, another with an eye injury.

The regime's assault has sparked a tide of displacement in the Damascus suburbs as civilians try to escape the violence. Some have moved deeper into the opposition-held enclave, while some 50,000 others have crossed the front-lines, to regime authorities.

The regime's air and ground assault, which escalated Feb. 18, has seen the once sprawling territory at the doors of the capital shrink to three disconnected opposition-held islands. The evacuation by Ahrar al-Sham from Harasta, if it goes through Thursday, could serve as a blueprint for other rebels in other towns, bringing the regime closer to recapturing the entire territory.

The international medical charity Doctors Without Borders said the advancing regime forces had captured or destroyed 19 of the 20 hospitals the group was supporting just one week ago. It said the medical staff was fleeing the approaching front lines.

The opposition holds just 20 percent of the eastern Ghouta territory they held one month ago, according to the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitoring group. But that territory includes several densely populated residential zones including Douma, the largest town in eastern Ghouta.

The Observatory said some 4,000 people evacuated Douma since Wednesday. The Russian military said more than 5,000 people left eastern Ghouta.

Opposition and the regime exchanged 18 prisoners ahead of the Harasta evacuation, according to pro-regime media.

The 13 men released by the Syrian opposition identified themselves to the media outside Harasta as soldiers and civilians attached to the Syrian army, who were captured by the opposition in the fighting for Harasta. Crying in relief, they thanked God, the Syrian army and Assad for their freedom.

The deal for Harasta will see 1,500 opposition fighters and 6,000 civilians leave to an opposition-held province in northwest Syria, according to the state-affiliated Military Media Center.

Monther Fares, a spokesman for the opposition faction Ahrar al-Sham, confirmed that his group's fighters were preparing to depart. Fares said the opposition 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.

But the arrangement leaves other fighters for the Failaq al-Rahman group still inside. The regime is threatening to move on them if they do not also agree to depart.

State-affiliated al-Ikhbariya TV cast the deal as a victory for the country. Its correspondent Rabieh Dibeh said the regime would restore its authority over Harasta once the "terrorists" left the town. He said defectors from the army would be ordered to rejoin the service.

Critics say it is a formula for displacement that legitimizes the regime's brutal siege tactics that have deprived hundreds of thousands of civilians of food and medicines and subjected them to a half-decade of violence. Numerous, top U.N. officials have likened the tactics to war crimes and crimes against humanity. </s> Syria’s government forces are taking more villages from the Islamic State in East Aleppo countryside, and have now become at a stone’s throw from re-taking the group’s stronghold of al-Khafsah.

Fierce battles were reported to have taken place around the ISIS-controlled village of al-Khafsah whereby the Syrian Army succeeded to recapture several villages. One of which is Dkherah, located at the frontline with the US-backed, predominantly-Kurdish Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF).

The new advance gets the Army closer to almost encircle the terror group in its bastion; which will also secure the water pumping station that feeds the entire northern city of Aleppo.

The results of the Army’ military operations in East Aleppo prove to be more than satisfying. In total, more than 850 km2 of territories have been so far liberated by the government forces since the campaign began less than 2 months ago. In addition to more than 132 villages fully recaptured.
Dozens of displaced civilians from al-Khafse and nearby villages in the countryside of Manbij gather in the village of Arbaa al-Kabir to protest against the Bashar al-Assad government, demanding the removal of pro-Assad forces from their villages and calling for the intervention of the Syrian Democratic Forces after accusing regime forces of looting houses and threatening residents.