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More than 2,000 rebels and their family members have left the devastated district of Qaboun on the edge of the Syrian capital Damascus after more than two months of aerial strikes and artillery shelling, state media said on Sunday.
The rebels had agreed overnight to a secret evacuation deal after being cornered in a small pocket of Qaboun, which lies on the northeastern edge of Damascus. The area has been largely reduced to rubble after being struck by hundreds of aerial strikes and missiles over a period of about 80 days.
The Syrian army had resumed its intensive bombardment of 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 were evacuated this week from the adjacent Barzeh district after rebels there decided to lay down their arms and leave to rebel-held Idlib province.
Syrian state media said 2,289 people had left the district to rebel-held Idlib province on Sunday, half of whom were fighters. Rebels put the total figure at more than 1,500 people.
At least three people were killed when a shooting took place at a bus among a convoy of more than 30 buses ferrying the evacuees northwards out of Damascus, a rebel source said.
Most of the residents of the once-bustling area, which had sheltered thousands of displaced people from other parts of Syria in the course of the conflict, fled in the last two months as the bombing escalated.
(CGTN)
