World New deal for rebel exit from Syrian town: state media

© NAZEER AL-KHATIB/AFP/Getty Images A Syrian man looks on as buses with Jaish al-Islam fighters and their families arrive at a checkpoint near the Syrian town of al-Bab in the northern Aleppo province on April 14. Syrian state media reported on Tuesday that rebels from the Jaish al-Islam faction would quit another town east of Damascus, just days after evacuating their main bastion outside the capital.

State news agency SANA said a new deal had been inked for the rebels to exit the town of Dumayr, around 50 kilometers (30 miles) east of Damascus.

Jaish al-Islam had maintained control over the town since 2016 under a "reconciliation" agreement with regime forces, whereby they would not fire at each other.

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Syria ’s internal security forces entered Douma on Saturday, state media reported, saying the final rebel holdout on the edge of Damascus would be secured within “hours”. Under the deal , Russian military police were to deploy in the town but Syrian forces were not to enter.

Rebels are seen in a bus as they are evacuated from the town of Douma, eastern Ghouta, in Damascus, Syria April 1, 2018. Under the deal , Syrian state media said Jaish al-Islam would hand over heavy and medium -sized weapons and acknowledge the restoration of the Damascus

But the new deal, SANA reported, "provides for the departure of around 1,000 terrorists from Jaish al-Islam to Jarabulus," a rebel-controlled northern town.

Rebels had already begun handing over heavy weapons as part of the agreement, it said. Jaish al-Islam has not commented on the deal.

It comes three days after Jaish al-Islam evacuated the last opposition-held town in the onetime rebel bastion of Eastern Ghouta. Their departure paved the way for the Syrian army to declare its full control over Ghouta, after a ferocious two-month military assault on the enclave. The offensive ended with a trio of evacuation deals that saw tens of thousands of rebels and civilians bussed up to northern Syria.

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Syria invites OPCW to investigate alleged chemical attack in Douma

<p>The Syrian government has invited the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons to send a team to investigate allegations of a chemical attack in the eastern Ghouta town of Douma, state media reported on Tuesday.</p>The suspected chemical weapons attack late on Saturday killed at least 60 people, with more than 1,000 injured at several sites in Douma, a town near the capital, Damascus, according to the Union of Medical Care Organizations.

and their families ,from their former rebel bastion of Douma , arrive at the Abu Al-Zindeen checkpoint controlled by Turkish-backed rebel fighters near the northern Syrian town of Al-Bab -AFP. Damascus: A new group of rebels and other civilians left Syria ’s Douma on Friday, state media said

A suspected chemical weapons attack occurred over the weekend in the besieged rebel -held town of Syrian state media is reporting that dozens of civilians who had been held for years by a rebel Under an evacuation deal for eastern Ghouta that was mediated by Russia, Assad's top ally, no

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based war monitor, said Tuesday that government forces were keen to clear out the armed opposition from any territory near Damascus.

"Regime forces, after taking all of Eastern Ghouta, want to finish off the rest of the rebel fighters around the capital so they can secure it," said Observatory head Rami Abdel Rahman. "This is why they're replacing the reconciliation deals with evacuation agreements," he told AFP.

Similar rebel departures were being negotiated for other nearby towns and for areas south of Damascus including Yalda, Beit Saham, and Babila, the Observatory said.

Meanwhile, government forces were preparing an assault on neighborhoods in southern Damascus held by the Islamic State group.

The Observatory said Tuesday that regime forces had fired dozens of shells and rockets onto the areas overnight and that IS had retaliated with shelling on Damascus that left one child dead.