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2015-12-27 Syria-Lebanon-Iran
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Evacuation of IS group fighters from Damascus delayed
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A UN-sponsored deal to evacuate more than 2,000 Islamic State (IS) group fighters and other militants from rebel-held parts of south Damascus has been delayed, a body that monitors the war said on Saturday, a day after a rebel leader was killed.
Buses were due to transport the fighters to Raqqa, the de facto capital of the IS group in northern Syria, Lebanese Hezbollah’s Manar TV station said.
But the deal fell through after the Jaysh al Islam rebel group’s leader Zahran Alloush, through whose territory the convoy had been granted safe passage, was killed in an air strike on Friday, the broadcaster said.
| Talk about a secondary explosion... |
The arrangement was the first of its kind between the Syrian authorities and the IS group. It would have marked a significant show of strength by the government of President Bashar al-Assad, increasing its chances of reasserting control over a strategic area four kilometres south of the centre of the capital.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the evacuation had been expected to take place early Saturday but was delayed as there was now no secure territory for the militants to pass through.
Manar TV said buses arrived on Friday to pick up the fighters and at least 1,500 family members but had turned back.
The broadcaster is the official mouthpiece of Hezbollah, a Lebanese Shiite group which is a major ally of Assad and has sent its forces to fight alongside government troops.
Local hostilities grow toward IS group
The IS group has a large presence in several southern neighbourhoods of Damascus, including the Palestinian refugee camp of Yarmouk. Local hostility towards the Jihadist group - which controls large swathes of territory in Syria and Iraq - has grown.
"We have had enough with their presence and the fighting that goes and the siege that has caused a lot of hardship," said Yousef, a resident of the nearby neighbourhood of Hajar al Aswad, who declined to give his full name for security reasons.
A years-long government siege of parts of Damascus controlled by a patchwork of rebel groups - of which Jaysh al Islam is the largest - has impeded the flow of food and humanitarian aid, starving many people to death in what rights group Amnesty International has described as a war crime. 
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Posted by Steve White 2015-12-27 00:00||
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File under: Islamic State
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Posted by Shipman 2015-12-27 10:27||
2015-12-27 10:27||
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