Syrian rebel fighters on Friday left one pocket of battered Eastern Ghouta and reached a deal to quit another as the regime drew close to regaining full control over the key enclave after a more than month-long battle.
A blistering Russian-backed assault since February 18 on the last opposition bastion near Damascus had splintered rebel territory into three shrinking pockets, each held by different factions.
Damascus and its ally Moscow have implemented a “leave or die” strategy with deadly air strikes on the enclave as they look to end six years of opposition control.
State television said the town of Harasta had “been emptied of terrorists” after a deal that saw fighters from Islamist group Ahrar al-Sham and their families bussed to northwestern Idlib province, still largely rebel-held.
The evacuation extended regime dominance to over 90 percent of the bombed-out Ghouta enclave that the rebels have clung to through years of punishing government siege, a Britain-based war monitor said.
President Bashar al-Assad’s forces look set to expand their control soon over another key area after Islamist group Faylaq al-Rahman struck a deal to evacuate starting at 0700 GMT on Saturday.
The agreement will see a southern stretch of territory that includes the towns of Zamalka, Arbin and Ain Tarma cleared, while talks are under way over the third and final pocket, around Ghouta’s main town of Douma.
The withdrawal deal came after Russian air strikes using “incendiary munitions” hit the town of Arbin late Thursday, killing 37 civilians, according to the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. AFP reporters saw similar munitions fall on Douma.
But Russia denied it was carrying out any such strikes.
