by Maya Gebeily with Delil Souleiman at Tabqa Dam
Agence France-Presse
BEIRUT, Lebanon – Four Syrian towns are to be evacuated under an agreement between pro-government forces and rebels, in the latest of a series of deals to end crippling years-long sieges.
The agreement, brokered by rebel supporter Qatar and regime ally Iran, is expected to involve more than 30,000 people, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.
The deal reached late Tuesday involves Zabadani and Madaya, besieged by regime fighters near Damascus, and Shiite-majority Fuaa and Kafraya in northwest Syria that are encircled by rebels.
Such evacuations have been touted by President Bashar al-Assad as a way to end his country’s six-year war, but his opponents say the regime is redrawing Syria’s map with forced displacement.
The conflict has killed more than 320,000 people and forced millions more from their homes.
In the central city of Homs, where evacuations from the last rebel-held district resumed last month, a bomb struck a bus on Wednesday, killing five people, state media said.
The Observatory, a British-based monitor, said the residents of Zabadani, Madaya, Fuaa, and Kafraya are to quit their hometowns over the course of 60 days starting next week.
All of the residents of Fuaa and Kafraya are expected to leave, while it was unclear if the evacuations of Madaya and Zabadani would empty the towns completely.
Part of the Yarmuk Palestinian camp south of Damascus is also to be evacuated.
Truce takes effect
“The evacuations are not expected to begin until April 4 but, as a goodwill measure, a ceasefire for the towns came into effect overnight,” said Observatory chief Rami Abdel Rahman, adding that the truce would last nine months.
Islamist rebels in the northwest province of Idlib have approved the deal, under which 32,000 people are expected to be evacuated, Abdel Raman told AFP.
Hassan Sharaf, who is coordinating the deal on behalf of the government, said a total of 16,000 people would quit Fuaa and Kafraya “in two waves.”
“Everyone will be evacuated. They will be transported by ground via Aleppo, then to Latakia and Damascus,” he told AFP on Wednesday.
At least 600,000 people are living under siege in Syria, according to the United Nations, with another four million people in so-called “hard-to-reach” areas.
The four towns are part of an existing deal reached in 2015 that has seen simultaneous evacuations and aid deliveries, the last of which took place in November.
The UN, which oversaw the initial agreement, has admitted that the “tit-for-tat arrangement” has complicated efforts to get aid in.
The UN’s humanitarian office in Damascus told AFP that it was not involved in the negotiations, while the Syrian Arab Red Crescent confirmed it would take part in evacuations.
The new deal also stipulates that Syria’s government release 1,500 prisoners held for political activism since the uprising began in 2011 but gives no time frame.
The regime has been accused by rights groups of the torture and summary executions of thousands of people in its prisons and intelligence services headquarters.
In Damascus on Wednesday meanwhile, Assad replaced the justice, economy, and development ministers, without giving a reason.
Shelling on dam
The UN has hosted several rounds of peace talks in Geneva to try to reach a political solution to the conflict.
On Wednesday, UN envoy Staffan de Mistura met with the opposition delegation and was expected to meet government representatives.
The conflict transformed from an anti-Assad protest movement into a full-blown war pitting government forces, rebels, Kurds, and jihadists against each other.
In the country’s north, US-backed fighters are waging an offensive to encircle the Islamic State group’s Syrian bastion of Raqa.
The campaign is now focused on the key IS-held town of Tabqa and the adjacent dam on the Euphrates River, where engineers carried out urgent maintenance on Wednesday.
The technicians came under fire from at least six IS shells as they worked to open a spillway to drain water that had built up in the reservoir, AFP’s correspondent there said.
People could be seen running for cover along part of the dam, whose northern entrance has been captured by the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces.
The UN has warned of catastrophic flooding downstream if it were to burst, but the SDF and the US-led coalition have insisted there is no structural damage.
But technicians inside the complex and the Observatory said the dam’s main electrical control room had been knocked out.
SDF fighters have advanced to within eight kilometres (five miles) of Raqa city at their closest point.