Hundreds
of fighters have been boarding buses along with their families in a
pocket of territory lying in central Syria, between Homs and Hama.
Under
a deal with the government's Russian allies, the militants have been
given safe passage to opposition-controlled territory in northern Syria.
It is the latest rebel enclave to give in after a long siege.
The only significant areas of Syria still in rebel hands lie along its borders in the far north and the far south.
- Why is there a war in Syria?
How was the evacuation agreed?
Terms
were hammered out at marathon talks between Free Syria Army factions
and Russian generals in the Homs countryside on Wednesday, Reuters news
agency reports.
Rebel
heavy weapons are being surrendered but rebel fighters are being
allowed to leave with light arms, on buses going to rebel-controlled
Idlib province in the north-east.
Russian
military police are meant to guard the buses and protect the mainly
Sunni Muslim civilians who remain in the former enclave from sectarian
revenge attacks by Alawites living nearby.
The
enclave, which includes the town of Rastan, was heavily bombed by
Russian aircraft before the deal was agreed, according to local people.
"They
left rebels with no option after bombing civilians and giving them no
choice either to submit or obliterate their areas and make civilians pay
the price," Abul Aziz al Barazi, one of the civilian opposition
negotiators, told Reuters.
The
evacuation is expected to take two days and see thousands of people
leave on the buses, which snaked out of Rastan on Monday.
Where does this leave the war?
After
seven years of war, the Assad government, backed by Russian and Iranian
military muscle, controls much of central Syria again, including the
second city, Aleppo.
The
fall of the enclave between Homs and Hama secures for the government an
important highway which was closed for years by the war. The M5 links
Aleppo to the capital Damascus through Homs.
Rebel
forces are now concentrated in Idlib, where tens of thousands of
fighters and their families arrived from the former Eastern Ghouta
enclave last month.
Rebels also still control parts of Deraa province in the far south-west.
Elsewhere
in the country, Turkey, alarmed by the growth of Kurdish influence in
Syria, recently seized the north-western Afrin region controlled by the
Syrian Kurdish YPG militia.
Nearby,
the US continues to support the Kurdish-dominated Syrian Democratic
Forces in their continuing operation against the Islamic State group.
Over
seven years of war, more than 400,000 people have been killed or
reported missing, according to the UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human
Rights.
More
than half the population of 22 million have been driven from their
homes with at least 6.1 million Syrians internally displaced, and
another 5.6 million living abroad, the vast majority of them in
neighbouring countries like Lebanon.
