Rebels, families start evacuating Syria’s Daraya

Syrian army soldiers are seen around a bus with civilians to be evacuated from the besieged Damascus suburb of Daraya, after an agreement reached on Thursday between rebels and Syria’s army, Syria August 26, 2016.

According to analysts, the withdrawal of rebels just a few miles from Damascus is a boost for President Bashar al-Assad’s authority.

Ambulances and Red Crescent vehicles entered Syria’s besieged town of Daraya on Friday as thousands of rebels and civilians prepared to leave before its surrender to government forces.

The United Nations voiced concern on Friday at a deal to end the siege in a besieged Damascus suburb, saying civilians should only be evacuated if it safe to do so. Fighters reportedly will be allowed to leave for rebel-held Idlib province, near the Turkish border, based on a deal reached with government representatives Thursday. Daraya council said on Facebook that civilians would be taken to the government-held town of Hrajela in Western Ghouta, outside Damascus.

Syrian army has surrounded rebels and civilians and blocked food deliveries in Daraya since 2012.

Over the next four years, barrel bombs blasted the city.

It was “imperative” that its residents be protected and evacuated only voluntarily, adding: “The world is watching”. The evacuation is expected to last until Sunday, and a military source said the army would then enter Daraya.

The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reported that during the last four years, Daraya has only received two humanitarian aid convoys – both in June. “Darayya was one of the very first towns to go against Assad”.

The Syrian opposition reacted bitterly to the evacuation, saying that the global community had failed the people of Daraya.

Daraya was seen as a symbolic bastion of the uprising that began with peaceful protests against Assad’s government, before degenerating into a war that has killed over 290,000 people.

More than 5 million people live in “hard-to-reach” areas of Syria, according to United Nations figures, including nearly 600,000 people living in 18 besieged areas – 15 by the government of Syria or its allies, and three by rebels.

Residents and families of rebels in Daraya leave en masse.

The decision to abandon the town, reached Thursday after almost a month of negotiations, appears to have embarrassed both the United Nations, charged by the world community with keeping besieged towns like Daraya alive, and to the International Committee of the Red Cross, which ordinarily plays a lead role in any organized movements of civilians in wartime.

“For four years Darayya was under siege and the worldwide community did nothing”, he said in a radio broadcast in northern Syria.

After five years of conflict, some 90 percent of the suburb’s pre-war population had fled.

In recent weeks, the army has escalated its use of barrel and incendiary bombs there. “The city was destroyed over our heads and we are now not leaving a city but a pile of rubble”, he said.

Elsewhere, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and his Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov are meeting in Geneva on Friday in hope of agreeing a deal on cooperation between the two countries on fighting radical Islamist groups in Syria.