People from the north-western towns of Foah and Kefraya are being taken to government-held areas near Aleppo
\nMonitoring Desk
\nThe Syrian government and rebel groups have begun an operation to move people out of four besieged towns, activists say.
\nPeople from the north-western towns of Foah and Kefraya are being taken to government-held areas near Aleppo.
\nEvacuees from rebel-held Madaya, near Damascus, have been bussed to Idlib province. It is not clear if nearby Zabadani, included in the deal, is also being evacuated.
\nMore than 30,000 people will be moved.
\nLast month, the UN described the situation in the four towns as \u201ccatastrophic\u201d, with more than 64,000 civilians \u201ctrapped in a cycle of daily violence and deprivation\u201d. Many people are reported to have died as a result of shortages of food or medicine.
\nMeanwhile, in Moscow, the foreign ministers of Russia, Iran and Syria pledged to investigate a suspected chemical attack in Syria earlier this month that the West has blamed on the Syrian government.
\nBut Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has already said reports of a chemical attack committed by his forces were \u201c100% fabrication\u201d.
\nFoah and Kefraya, most of whose residents are Shia Muslims, have been encircled by rebels and al-Qaeda-linked Sunni jihadists since March 2015.
\nMadaya and Zabadani, which are predominantly Sunni, have meanwhile been besieged since June 2015 by the Syrian army and fighters from Lebanon\u2019s Shia Islamist Hezbollah movement. As part of what is known as the \u201cFour Towns Agreement\u201d, the warring parties have allowed the UN and the Red Cross to deliver aid on a few occasions in the past two years and to remove limited numbers of sick and injured people.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
People from the north-western towns of Foah and Kefraya are being taken to government-held areas near Aleppo Monitoring Desk The Syrian government and rebel groups have begun an operation to move people out of four besieged towns, activists say. People from the north-western towns of Foah and Kefraya are being taken to government-held areas near […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-16120","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-world"},"yoast_head":"\n