A Syrian opposition fighter from the Failaq al-Rahman brigade looks through the scope of a sniper rifle as he sits behind cover in a damaged building on the frontline in the rebel-held enclave of Arbin in Eastern Ghouta, near Damascus, on Feb. 15, 2018.AB
BEIRUT - 10 March 2018: The Syrian rebel group Jaish al-Islam said on Friday it had agreed to evacuate Nusra Front fighters being held in its prisons in besieged eastern Ghouta to rebel-held Idlib province.
In a statement published on Twitter on Friday, the group said the decision had been made in consultation with the United Nations, a number of international parties and civil society representatives from eastern Ghouta.
"After our meeting today with the delegation which entered Ghouta accompanying the aid convoy, an agreement was reached to evacuate the first batch of (Nusra Front) members present in the prisons of Jaish al-Islam who had been detained during security operation that Jaish al-Islam began on 28 April, 2017," read the statement from the group's leadership, dated Friday.
Ghouta has been besieged for years, but in the last two weeks, the Syrian army has retaken nearly all the farmland in eastern Ghouta under cover of near-ceaseless shelling and air strikes, leaving only a dense sprawl of towns - about half the territory - still under insurgent control.
On Friday, an emergency aid convoy crossed front lines into eastern Ghouta and delivered its supplies.
The deal to evacuate members of Tahrir al-Sham, an alliance of jihadist factions linked to the Nusra Front, formerly the Syrian branch of al Qaeda, mirrors previous evacuation deals across Syria.
In many cases, rebels have surrendered terrain in return for safe passage to other opposition areas for themselves as well as relatives and other civilians loath to fall back under Assad's rule.
Comments
Leave a Comment