Roundup: Nearly 300 rebels start evacuating last stronghold in Syria's Homs city

A total of 274 members of the al-Qaida-linked Nusra Front started evacuating the last rebel stronghold inside the central Syrian city of Homs on Wednesday, under a deal recently concluded with the Syrian government and supervised by the United Nations, a Syrian official said.

Some 174 al-Nusra militants with their light weapons, 100 others unarmed, as well as 450 civilians, who are families of the Nusra militants, mounted green buses at the entrance to the district of al-Waer, west of Homs, and prepared to set off toward northern Syria, Homs governor Talal Barazi told reporters at the site.

Barazi said those who are being evacuated first were rebels from al-Nusra, who refused to accept a truce with government troops in al-Waer, a sprawling district that contains several government institutions.

He said as many as 2,000 rebels inside al-Waer have chosen to remain in the district, but to reconcile with the government.

Barazi said the evacuation of rebels and the processing of records of others who wanted to stay could take several weeks and that after the full implementation of the deal, Homs will be rebel-free and al-Waer will gradually return to government control.

Earlier in the day, a source told Xinhua that a convoy of buses and ambulances entered the al-Waer neighborhood to transport the first batch of rebels and their families from the sprawling neighborhood to the northwestern province of Idlib, one of the most prominent strongholds for the militants.

"The armed men started getting on the buses in accordance with a list of names the rebels handed over to the UN representatives and the Syrian authorities earlier," the source said on condition of anonymity.

The evacuation on Wednesday is the first implementation of the recently-concluded deal between the rebels and the Syrian government.

The deal also allows the rebels who want to remain in Homs to surrender to the authorities and clear their records, the source said.

The authorities will start settling the records of the armed men who want to return to their normal lives "in rebuilding their homeland and protecting Syria," the source added.

Under the deal, rebel detainees will be freed from government jails and food supply and aid convoys will be allowed into al-Waer, where government institutions will be reestablished and infrastructure rebuilt, the source said.

The source said negotiations and implementation of the agreement are supervised by the United Nations.

The efforts underway are the latest to reach a settlement there after several previous unsuccessful attempts. They came less than a month after world powers agreed in Vienna on the need to establish a cease-fire in Syria.

The UN special envoy to Syria, Staffan de Mistura, is working on establishing working groups from the opposition and the Syrian government to advance a political solution to the crisis. Endit