Syria Darayya: Deal reached to evacuate besieged town

Residents received their first supplies in four years in June

A deal has been reached to allow rebel fighters and thousands of civilians to leave the Syrian town of Darayya, which has been under government siege since 2012.

Both sides said that the evacuation of the town, near the capital Damascus, would begin on Friday. Residents have faced near-constant bombardment and shortages of food, water and power.

The thousands living in Darayya have faced near-constant bombardment

Civilians received their first supplies in four years only in June. It comes as US Secretary of State John Kerry is due to hold talks on Syria with his Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov in Geneva.

They are meeting in a bid to broker a temporary ceasefire in the city of Aleppo, where fighting between government and rebel forces has escalated in recent weeks, leaving hundreds dead.

Under the terms of the Darayya deal, 700 armed men will leave for the rebel-controlled city of Idlib while 4,000 civilians will move to government shelters, Syrian state media reported.


"We are being forced to leave, but our condition has deteriorated to the point of being unbearable," Hussam Ayash, an activist in the town, told the Associated Press news agency. "We withstood for four years but we couldn't any longer."

Meanwhile a monitoring group said 11 children had been killed in a barrel bomb attack by government forces in a rebel-held neighbourhood of Aleppo. They were among 15 people killed in the incident, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

The UN says Russia, who has been supporting the Syrian government in its offensives, has agreed to a 48-hour pause in Aleppo to allow in much-needed aid.

But the organisation added it was still waiting for agreement from other parties fighting on the ground. In another development, the US has urged "strong and swift action" after a UN investigation concluded that Syria used chemical weapons against its own people.