First rebels leave Syria's Eastern Ghouta under Russian-brokered deal

Syrian rebels and their families left Syria's Eastern Ghouta on Thursday under a Russian-brokered evacuation deal which could empty one of three rebel-held pockets in the besieged Damascus suburb.

The evacuation agreement, announced on Wednesday and brokered by regime ally Russia, could increase pressure on rebels to follow suit in the two other opposition-held pockets of the besieged enclave, where tens of thousands of civilians remain trapped under relentless bombardment.

Rebels and their families were bussed out in direction of the northwestern province of Idlib, after hours of waiting in a buffer zone for a green light to enter regime-held territory.

After hours of waiting in a buffer zone, more than 1,580 people including 413 fighters left the Ghouta town of Harasta on 30 buses, state news agency SANA said, crossing over into regime-held territory.

State television announced the "departure of buses carrying fighters from Harasta to Idlib".

An AFP correspondent saw the buses exit the battered rebel bastion, in the first such deal since a blistering regime assault on the enclave started on 18 February.

Rebels groups isolated

Munzer Fares, a spokesman for the Ahrar al-Sham rebel group controlling Harasta, said the evacuations could last several days.

The first departures followed renewed air strikes in Eastern Ghouta early on Thursday that killed 20 civilians, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

The regime's offensive on Ghouta has killed more than 1,500 civilians since 18 February, the Observatory says, and sliced the shrinking enclave into three isolated pockets.

Central Damascus lies within mortar range of Ghouta, and the evacuation deal came after the deadliest rebel rocket attack on the capital in months killed 44 civilians on Tuesday.

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Rebel fire on Thursday killed four people in Damascus, state television said.

The evacuation from Harasta will further isolate the rebel groups that control the remaining two pockets of Ghouta and pile pressure on them to accept similar deals.

Syrian Reconciliation Minister Ali Haidar told AFP that Ahrar al-Sham had negotiated with the Russian Centre for Reconciliation and that Damascus was not directly involved.

Nawar Oliver, an analyst at the Turkey-based Omran Centre, said fighters in Harasta "were not able to impose a single one of their conditions".

Opposition figures in Ghouta said talks were under way for a deal to evacuate rebels from the enclave's main town, Douma.

Douma is controlled by the Jaish al-Islam group, while a pocket of territory closer to the capital is held by Faylaq al-Rahman with a small jihadist presence.

A May 2014 deal saw rebels pull out of third city Homs, once labelled the "capital of the revolution" that sparked Syria's seven-year civil war.

In December 2016, the army retook the whole of second city Aleppo as rebels withdrew in one of their worst defeats of the war.

Those agreements also followed devastating bombardments that took a heavy toll on trapped civilians.