The forces of Damascus take the cradle of the uprising of 2011. The Syrian army entered the rebel neighborhoods of the city of Daraa, in the south of the country, on Wednesday (September 8), as part of a new truce agreement negotiated by the Syrian army. great ally of Damascus, Russia, according to official media and the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (OSDH).

The city had been blockaded for seventy-five days.

The city of Daraa is the capital of the province of the same name, controlled largely by the regime since 2018. Rebel groups still control a few areas under a previous truce agreement.

Under a new deal that ended heavy clashes in July and August 2021, soldiers entered Deraa al-Balad, the name given to southern neighborhoods in the city that had been under a regime siege for months.

They "hoisted the national flag, installed [military] positions and combed the area with a view to declaring it free from terrorists," the official Sana news agency said with reference to the rebels.

Other stages are foreseen by the agreement which, in the long term, will allow the regime to control all the southern districts and thus the whole of the city of Daraa.

The deal was negotiated by Russia, an ally of Bashar al-Assad's regime.

It offers rebels who hand over their weapons and men who have not done their compulsory military service the opportunity to stay in Deraa al-Balad.

Those who refuse to surrender must be evacuated to other rebel areas in the north.

According to OSDH, regime forces will search all houses in Deraa al-Balad and take the names of those who have decided to stay there.

The deadly fighting in July and August forced nearly 40,000 people, mostly children, to flee, according to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (Ocha).

The city of Daraa is the cradle of the 2011 anti-regime uprising in Syria, where the war claimed nearly 380,000 lives and forced millions to flee.

Bashar al-Assad had been able to reverse the course of the war with the help of his allies - Russia, Iran and Lebanese Hezbollah -, chaining victories from 2015 and taking over two-thirds of the territory, at the cost of a balance sheet very heavy.

With AFP

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