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An evacuation began overnight by thousands of people from two Syrian Loyalist villages besieged by rebels in the northwest, according to a war observer, with the government scheduled to release hundreds of detainees in return.
The Shiite villages of al-Foua and Kefraya should be emptied of all their residents and fighters. More than 100 buses arrived to transport residents and village fighters to government-controlled territory in Aleppo province.
The evacuation began with ambulances carrying the sick, reported the Syrian Observatory of Human Rights.
Syrian state-run al-Ikhbariya TV reported that five ambulances carrying six people in critical condition had arrived at a government checkpoint in al-Eis. Al-Manar channel, led by Lebanese Shiite group pro-Damascus Hezbollah, said the final phase of the deal was to be completed tonight.
Villages have been besieged for years by Sunni Islamist rebels in Idlib province in the latter part of Syria held by the insurgents. Assad, who is advancing against the rebels in the south-west, has promised to recover the entire country.
About 7,000 people have to leave both villages.
Population transfers were a common feature of the Syrian war of seven years, mainly to the detriment of Assad's opponents. The conflict killed around half a million people and drove 11 million people out of their homes.
Rebels and civilians were transported from their hometowns to the insurgent territory in the north, while government forces were advancing with critical aid from Russia and Iran.
The opposition has decried it as a systematic policy of forced displacement against those who oppose Assad, who comes from the Alawite sect, an offshoot of Shiite Islam.
The conflict took on a sectarian dimension as a result of protests against the Assad regime in 2011. Iranian-backed Shiite Islamist militias have deployed throughout the region to help Damascus against the rebels , many of whom identified themselves as Sunni Islamists.
Opposition sources said that officials of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, a coalition led by the former Syrian branch of al-Qaeda, had been negotiated by the guards of the Iranian revolution.
The pro-Assad commander and an Islamist rebel source familiar with the secret talks declared separately that Turkey was also involved in the process, which relies on an agreement last year that n & # 39; 39, had not been fully implemented.
State television reported that 121 buses had entered Wednesday at Al-Foua and Kefraya in Idlib province, as well as Syrian Arab Red Crescent (SARC) ambulances for sick residents .
The evacuees will include Alawite hostages that the rebel factions took when they invaded Idlib more than three years ago, the statement said.
In April of last year, thousands of people were expelled from both villages to the government territory in a similar mediation agreement.
In exchange, hundreds of residents left two cities on the border with Lebanon, Madaya and Zabadani, which were in the hands of Sunni rebels at the time and besieged by pro-government forces . They were moved to Idlib.
But other parties to the agreement – the evacuation of those left behind at al-Foua and Kefraya and the release of 1,500 inmates of state prisons – have not not occurred at that time.
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