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Syria: evacuation of rebels and families from Darayya under way Syria: evacuation of rebels and families from Darayya under way
(35 minutes later)
Rebels and civilians have begun evacuating the Syrian town of Darayya after a four-year army siege, in a blow for the beleaguered opposition. Aid workers have begun evacuating thousands of civilians from Darayya, a suburb of Damascus subjected to four years of siege and whose last remaining hospital was destroyed last week by an airstrike.
The evacuation came after a deal struck by President Bashar al-Assad’s government and opposition forces in the town, which is near Damascus and was one of the first to rise up against the regime. The evacuation, which will leave behind none of Darayya’s original residents, began after opposition fighters and the regime of Bashar al-Assad agreed to a deal that would end the blockade and allow civilians and militants to leave for other parts of Damascus and northern Syria
The fighters and their families left the devastated town aboard buses escorted by ambulances and Red Crescent vehicles. The UN and Red Crescent are overseeing the evacuation, which is taking place almost exactly four years after a massacre in the town by government troops, one of the war’s single worst atrocities, described by the UN secretary general, Ban Ki-moon, as “appalling and brutal”.
The first bus to emerge from Darayya carried mostly children, older people and women. Subsequent UN efforts to mediate a truce in Darayya failed, and on Friday the UN’s special envoy for Syria, Staffan de Mistura, said the UN had not been consulted on the agreement.
Government troops waved their weapons in celebration when buses carrying rebels left the town, and taunted the fighters by chanting pro-regime slogans. Under the terms of the deal, the 5,500 remaining civilians in the town, will be relocated to other suburbs of Damascus and rural villages. The remaining 1,500 fighters will surrender their weapons and be sent to opposition-held territory in the province of Idlib, near the Turkish border. They are expected to depart on Saturday.
Inside Darayya, which has been surrounded by loyalist forces since 2012 and suffered constant bombardment, tearful residents said final goodbyes. “This is unbearable, having to leave your home, surrendering it because of betrayal,” said Abu Samer, a spokesman for the local rebel group. Speaking from Jordan, he added. “I hope nobody ever tastes this bitterness.”
“This is the hardest moment, everyone is crying, young and old,” he said on condition of anonymity. Once a teeming suburb of 250,000 people, Darayya is now a rubble-strewn shell. Nearly all of its buildings have been damaged or destroyed during a punishing and often indiscriminate campaign that gradually whittled down essential services such as schools and hospitals as well as homes and roads.
State news agency Sana, which announced the deal on Thursday, said 700 rebels and their families would go to rebel-controlled Idlib and thousands of civilians would be taken to government reception centres. Darayya’s proximity to the heart of Damascus and the nearby military airport made it a central battleground for both those fighting to oust the Syrian dictator and those loyal to him. Over time, Syrian forces were supported by Shia militias from Hezbollah, Iraq and Afghanistan, and area became one of the civil war’s three defining battlefields.
The evacuation is expected to last until Sunday, and a military source said the army would then enter Darayya. Assad forces, heavily backed by Iran, won one of the two other areas in May 2014, ousting opposition fighters and civilians from the old city of Homs, Syria’s fourth city. The evacuation of Homs was followed by widespread arrests of opposition fighters, in violation of ceasefire agreements.
A rebel official said the civilians would go to regions under regime control around the capital and rebels will go to Idlib “or sort out their situation with the regime”. The fate of a third area, Aleppo, Syria’s second city, remains uncertain. The opposition-held east of the city briefly fell to Assad forces in June but has since been clawed back by rebel units backed by jihadi groups.
A military source said 300 rebels and their families would be evacuated during Friday. In the three years since the massacre in Darayya, a civilian council had governed the area, its authority respected by local fighters who belonged to a western-backed coalition known as the Southern Front.
Darayya council said on Facebook that civilians would be taken to the government-held town of Hrajela in Western Ghouta, outside Damascus. “We never had beheadings or criminality against civilians or extremism,” said Abu Samer. “Darayya was always a thorn in Assad’s side, and now they will have the rubble of all the buildings they destroyed.”
“From there they will continue to the areas they wish to go to,” it said. A small aid shipment in May constituted the first humanitarian supplies to reach the besieged town since 2012. But soon after aid workers departed, barrel bombs dropped by Syrian helicopters caused renewed destruction.
The council said fighters and their families would be taken to northern Syria, escorted by the Red Crescent. Opposition officials say the destruction of Darayya’s last remaining hospital, which burned to the ground after an airstrike, led to the decision to agree to surrender terms and withdraw.
The United Nations said it was not involved in negotiating the deal, although a UN team would enter Darayya to identify civilian needs. “As a fighter, for the civilians in there, I will surrender before the whole world,” said Abu Samer. “The civilians were starving. We surrendered for them, to keep them alive.”
The UN envoy, Staffan de Mistura, said it was “tragic that repeated appeals to lift the siege of Daray … and cease the fighting, have never been heeded”. “We lived four years of siege and continued to fight to overthrow tyranny,” he added. “But we didn’t reach the goal.”
It was “imperative” that its residents be protected and evacuated only voluntarily, he said. “The world is watching.” De Mistura urged the protection of civilians leaving the town. “The situation regarding Darayya is extremely grave,” he said in a statement. “It is tragic that repeated appeals to lift the siege of Darayya, besieged since November 2012, and cease the fighting, have never been heeded.”
Daraya was seen as a symbolic bastion of the March 2011 uprising that began with peaceful protests against Assad’s government, before degenerating into a war that has killed more than 290,000 people. Many opposition supporters see the siege of Darayya and its ultimate surrender as a failure by the international community to force the lifting of the blockade amid relentless bombardment.
Rebels accused the government of killing 500 people in a military operation in the town in August 2012. “The only surrender today is the ongoing surrender of the international community to the regime’s incessant campaign of war crimes,” said Issam al-Reis, a spokesman for the Southern Front. “It is their inaction that sponsors this ethnic cleansing today.”
Friday’s evacuation provoked anger and bitterness among opposition supporters, and the rebel said residents wept as they prepared to leave.
“People are saying goodbye to one another, children are bidding their schools farewell, mothers are saying goodbye to the martyrs in the graves,” he said.
The rebel said the decision to evacuate had been taken because of deteriorating humanitarian conditions.
“The town is no longer inhabitable, it has been completely destroyed,” he said.
In four years, just one food aid convoy entered Darayya, in June, shortly after a convoy carrying medicine. The arrival of the food was followed by heavy regime bombardment that residents said stalled distribution.