Scores of people left the last area held by insurgents in the Syrian city of Homs under a local truce between the government and rebels, a monitoring group said, a rare agreement in Syria’s nearly five-year conflict.
Three buses carrying people had left the previously besieged district of Waer, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said. About 750 people were expected to leave during the day for rebel-held areas in Hama and Idlib provinces.
Priority is to be given to women, children and the severely wounded, the observatory’s director Rami Abdel Rahman said, citing sources on the ground.
Photo: EPA
However, the evacuation will also include scores of fighters and their weapons who reject the truce, he said, among them a small group from al-Qaeda’s Syrian wing the al-Nusra Front.
Homs was a center of the uprising against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad that began in 2011. After a two-year government siege, a previous truce allowed insurgents to withdraw from the Old City. Waer and other areas remained in the hands of insurgents.
Some observers had criticized that previous agreement as an enforced surrender. The observatory said the Waer deal was better for the rebels this time because some fighters would stay in the district and the deal would be implemented in stages.
The UN is presiding over implementation of the deal, which was agreed directly between the Syrian sides. Some diplomats said local ceasefires between Syrians might be the most effective way of gradually bringing peace to the country.
Homs Governor Talal al-Barazi this week told reporters he felt “positive, good and promising steps” were being made toward implementing the accord, which started with a ceasefire.
Humanitarian aid reached Waer District last week under the terms of the agreement.
The Syrian army and allied militia launched a major ground offensive north of Homs after Russia began carrying out airstrikes in support of the Syrian military more than two months ago.
US President Barack Obama last month said that there might start to be pockets of ceasefires in parts of Syria, freeing opposition groups from Russian bombings.
The Homs deal follows the stalling of a separate plan aimed at halting fighting between rebels and government forces near Damascus.
In late September, Iran and Turkey, which back opposing sides in the Syrian conflict, also helped bring about local ceasefires in the town of Zabadani near the Lebanese border and in two villages in the northwestern province of Idlib.
A diplomat tracking Syria said the Waer agreement was an improvement on previous local ceasefires because it was directly negotiated by Syrians, rather than involving outside states.
“Some people are talking about 40 to 50 local ceasefires waiting on the shelf to be discussed,” the diplomat said.
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