Evacuated anti-Assad fighters arrive in Syria's Idlib

By Esref Musa and Burak Karacaoglu

IDLIB, Syria

Some of the anti-regime fighters who had evacuated from Western Ghouta under a deal with the Assad regime began arriving in Idlib and Daraa provinces, according to local sources.

The first group of evacuees comprising 108 group members, including 21 women and 29 children brought to a camp early Saturday in Idlib province.

Some of the evacuees also reached their places in Daraa province late Friday.

On Friday, a convoy of buses had arrived in Western Ghouta, a Damascus suburb, to transport anti-regime fighters -- and their families -- to Syria’s Idlib and Daraa provinces.

The move comes as part of a deal between the Assad regime and an Al-Qaeda-linked group that had maintained a presence in Western Ghouta’s Beit Jinn district, which has remained under a crippling regime siege for the last four years.

Under the terms of the deal, almost 1,000 armed fighters are expected to be evacuated from the area.

Syria has just begun to emerge from a devastating civil war that began in early 2011 when the Bashar al-Assad regime cracked down on pro-democracy protests with unexpected ferocity.