BEIRUT/MOSCOW:The enclaves in south Damascus and near Homs are the only two besieged areas still held by rebels, though they still control large tracts of northwest and southwest Syria, lying along its international borders, which are not surrounded by the army.
Syrian President Bashar Assad has focused on dislodging rebels from their remaining besieged pockets since driving them from Eastern Ghouta last month after a fierce offensive. Syrian state television showed footage of buses arriving at Beit Sahm, driving through narrow streets surrounded by soldiers and with concrete buildings above showing scars of war.
It later reported that the first batch of buses had departed, carrying fighters and their families from the area.
Some 5,000 fighters and their family members are expected to leave the Beit Sahm, Babila and Yalda neighborhoods for the opposition areas in northern Syria, it reported, following an earlier group which left the enclave on Monday.
Daesh terrorists holding another part of the same enclave are still fighting after weeks of intense bombardment in the area of Al-Hajjar Al-Aswad and the Yarmouk Palestinian refugee camp.
On Wednesday, insurgents in the biggest of the remaining besieged areas, located between the cities of Hama and Homs around the towns of Rastan, Talbiseh and Houla, also agreed to surrender. However, a small number of them rejected the deal and shelled regime areas late on Wednesday and early on Thursday, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights war monitor and two local sources said.
Separately, a Russian fighter jet crashed Thursday off the coast of Syria, killing both pilots, according to Russia’s Defense Ministry, which said the plane did not come under fire and that the crash may have been caused by a bird getting sucked into one of the engines. State news agency Tass cited the ministry as saying the Su-30 crashed shortly after takeoff from the Russian air base at Hemeimeem in Syria.
Meanwhile, London has confirmed that a British airstrike on Daesh terrorists in Syria unintentionally killed a civilian — the first time it has confirmed a civilian death in the fight against Daesh.
The Royal Air Force strike on three Daesh fighters in eastern Syria on March 26 also killed a motorcyclist who crossed into the area at the last minute, Defense Secretary Gavin Williamson said in a statement.
It comes a day after the BBC reported that a source inside the coalition fighting Daesh, as saying he believed civilians had been killed in “several” RAF attacks.
“During a strike to engage three Daesh fighters, a civilian motorbike crossed into the strike area at the last moment and it is assessed that one civilian was unintentionally killed,” Williamson said.
“We reached this conclusion after undertaking routine and detailed post-strike analysis of all available evidence,” he said.
A Ministry of Defense statement on March 26 had said of the attack that a Reaper remotely controlled aircraft had tracked “a group of terrorists in a vehicle” in the Syrian Euphrates valley and “successfully destroyed it and its occupants with a precision Hellfire missile attack.”
In another development, a medical charity said a hospital has been destroyed in an airstrike in opposition-held northwest Syria.
The Union of Medical Care and Relief Organizations charity, which supports hospitals and doctors in opposition territory, said the hospital in the village of Kafr Zeita was targeted Wednesday morning. It said in a statement the hospital was struck four times, and one worker was killed. It said the hospital in the rural north Hama countryside served 5,000 patients per month.
The Syrian observatory also reported the strike. It said the hospital suffered heavy damage and could no longer serve patients. The observatory said it could not determine if Russian or Syrian jets were behind the strike.
