The Syrian
army and its allies are on the verge of completely seizing the rebel-held
district of Qaboun on the edge of the capital Damascus following over two
months of
aerial strikes and artillery shelling, rebels and state media said on
Sunday.
But rebels
said they still held a small pocket within the neighborhood that lies in the
northeastern edge of the capital that has been mostly reduced to rubble after
around 80 days in which it was struck by hundreds of aerial strikes and
missiles.
The army had
resumed its intensive bombardment in the district on Wednesday after a one-day
ultimatum it gave the rebels mainly drawn from the area to surrender and agree
to evacuate to rebel-held areas in northern Syria.
"The
regime has threatened to destroy what is left of Qaboun and will not accept
anything but a military solution," Abdullah al Qabouni from the local
council of the district told Reuters.
Hundreds of
rebels and their families had been evacuated this week from the adjacent Barzeh
district after rebels there decided to lay down their arms and leave to
rebel-held Idlib province. [nL8N1IE5IR]. They included some from Qaboun.
There were
unconfirmed reports from a local source in the district that an agreement had
been reached to evacuate the rebels from Qaboun on Sunday. About 1,500 fighters
and their families are now trapped in a nearly one square kilometre zone.
A news
bulletin on state television said evacuations had begun, quoting the governor
of Damascus. No other details were provided on the numbers.
Most of the
residents of the once-bustling area, that had sheltered thousands of displaced
people from other parts of Syria in the course of the conflict, had fled in the
last two months as the bombing escalated.
The loss of
Qaboun following Barzeh is a another blow to rebels battling to keep a foothold
in the capital and facing government troops who are backed by Russian air power
and Iranian-backed militias.
They are
situated on the eastern gate of Damascus, districts which were the scene earlier
this year of battles that were the first such large-scale foray inside the
capital in over four years. The army was able to repel the attack after heavy
aerial bombing forced the rebels to retreat
Syrian
President Bashar al-Assad has promoted the use of such evacuations, along with
what his government calls "reconciliation" deals for rebel-held areas
that surrender to the government, as a way of reducing bloodshed.
But the
United Nations has criticized both the use of siege tactics which precede such deals
and the evacuations themselves as amounting to forcible displacement.
The Sunni
rebels accuse the government of seeking to evict Sunni inhabitants in these
areas in demographic changes they say would eventually pave the way for
Iranian-backed Shi'ites who back President Assad's rule to take over their
homes, a claim the authorities deny.
Army
advances were made possible after tunnels between Qaboun and Barzeh were cut
and the army isolated the areas from the rest of the main rebel enclave of
Eastern Ghouta.
The
tightening of the siege in the two districts, where tens of thousands of people
lived, forced the hands of rebels to eventually agree to deals worked out
elsewhere that force them to pull back to northern Syria.
"They
besieged us and even medicines for children or any supplies were no longer left
... and people died of hunger," said Ahmad Khatib, who was among those who
left on Friday.
The densely
populated rural Eastern Ghouta district of farms and towns has been besieged
since 2013. It remains the only major rebel bastion near Damascus and the fall
of Qaboun and Barzeh have removed a main line of defense that protected it,
rebels say.
*REUTERS*
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