Convoy crosses into Syria for border village evacuation

Buses and ambulances carrying around 450 fighters and civilians evacuated from two besieged areas in Syria have crossed into Turkey and Lebanon, sources at the border crossings said.

Syrian state TV said 123 wounded fighters and their families will leave the predominantly Sunni Zabadani, while the Observatory said 129 civilians and fighters will be brought to Beirut before being flown to Turkey.

The deal will allow rebel fighters who have been holed up for months in Zabadani, near the Lebanese border, to have safe passage to Beirut airport to then head for their final destination of Turkey under International Red Cross Committee (ICRC) auspices.

Also on Monday, rights activists said a Syrian journalist and filmmaker who documented atrocities by the Islamic State in Syria and trained hundreds of citizen journalists had been killed in a Turkish town near the Syrian border.

The United Nations and foreign governments have tried to broker local ceasefires and safe-passage agreements as steps toward the wider goal of ending Syria’s near five-year civil war, which has killed more than 250,000 people.

Earlier in December, Bashar Assad’s government and opposition forces reached a conditional ceasefire agreement under United Nations aegis in al-Waer, a Homs city district that has been under government siege since 2012.

The buses carrying the wounded from Kafraya and Foa are heading toward Turkey, as part of the deal, while the buses carrying the rebels and their families from Zabadani are heading to Beirut, Lebanon.

There were concerns that the agreement could eventually amount to a swap of ethnic populations, moving Shiites from Fouaa and Kfarya to friendlier territory in Lebanon or government-held parts of Syria, and moving Sunnis to Turkey or to insurgent-held areas of Syria.

At the same time as the Zabadani transports, about 336 people – including women and children – were being evacuated from the two Shia villages, which are in Idlib.

The once popular resort city, northwest of the capital Damascus, was one of the rebels’ last strongholds along the border. Barrazi said the attacks came in response to the reconciliation deal in the city. A wounded rebel fighter was shown being carried on a stretcher into a Syrian Arab Red Crescent ambulance.

The rebels from Zabadani will be able to receive treatment in Turkey and return to the Syrian battlefield in the north.