Wounded Syrian fighters and civilians evacuated under UN deal

Hundreds of wounded fighters and civilians from opposing sides of the Syrian war arrived in Lebanon on Monday night from Shia villages in Syria, as part of a UN-backed deal which also saw dozens of rebel fighters and their families evacuated to Turkey.The landmark deal is the latest step in a six-month truce brokered by backers of both Bashar al-Assad’s government and the rebels fighting to overthrow him and could act as a model for local ceasefires meant to reduce the violence in a civil war that has claimed more than a quarter of a million lives. The UN-brokered deal comes ahead of next month’s peace talks in Vienna, aimed at resolving the five-year crisis.

“Today’s humanitarian action shows that even in the middle of fierce conflicts, agreements can be reached, solely for the purpose of alleviating human suffering,” said Marianne Gasser, head of the International Committee of the Red Cross delegation in Syria.

“Parties involved in the fighting must allow access by humanitarian actors to all people who have been affected by years of fighting, especially to those in besieged and hard to reach areas.”

The villages involved are Fua, Kefraya, Madaya and Zabadani. Fua and Kefraya are regime-held towns with mostly Shia Muslim residents, and have been besieged for months by opposition fighters in the country’s north-west. Zabadani was once a stronghold of the opposition – one of its last along the stretch of the Qalamoun mountains that straddles the Lebanese border – but much like neighbouring Madaya it has been decimated by a relentless siege by the Assad regime and its Lebanese ally, Hezbollah. A handful of rebels from the Ahrar al-Sham opposition militia and local fighters in Zabadani have not yet been subdued.