Syria Enclave Rebels Say Ready to Expel jihadists
The main rebel groups in Syria's Eastern Ghouta said Tuesday they would be willing to expel jihadist fighters from the enclave as soon as a U.N. ceasefire takes effect.
A daily humanitarian "pause" called by Moscow began on Tuesday but the measure falls short of a broader 30-day truce voted by the U.N. Security Council over the weekend.
Eastern Ghouta, which lies just east of Damascus, is home to some 400,000 civilians and is controlled by myriad armed groups, some of which are only present in certain parts of the enclave.
The main forces are Islamist groups -- Jaish al-Islam, Faylaq al-Rahman and Ahrar al-Sham -- who on Tuesday addressed a letter to the United Nations which was seen by AFP.
They declared their "complete commitment to deport" jihadist fighters from Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, a group made up mostly of fighters from al-Qaida's ex-affiliate al-Nusra Front.
The letter said such an evacuation, which has been discussed previously but never yielded any result, would take 15 days and start when a U.N. truce takes effect.
The Security Council on Saturday voted a resolution calling for a 30-day humanitarian truce in Syria, mostly aimed at stopping one of the bloodiest episodes in the country's seven-year-old conflict.
Such a ceasefire has yet to materialize.
The signatories said they wanted any evacuations to be conducted under the control and supervision of a U.N.-led coordination mechanism.
The Syrian government lost control of Eastern Ghouta, which lies just east of the capital Damascus, in 2012, and have besieged it almost ever since.
The main rebel groups have so far rejected Russian-brokered offers to evacuate civilians of any fighters of their own.
Source: Agence France Presse
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