The tenth batch of Waer neighborhood’s evacuees left the last rebel stronghold in Homs city on Tuesday, heading northern Idlib province, local reporter said.
The 60 buses were loaded with 2613 people, including 400 rebel fighters, resuming an evacuation expected to be among the largest of its kind under a Russian-backed deal with the regime.
The evacuation is scheduled to deport about 25000 rebels and their families. 17000 people left the central city of Homs to the northern provinces of Idlib and Aleppo in the last weeks, according to Zaman al-Wasl report.
Over the past year, the regime has accelerated its drive to push rebel-held pockets to surrender under evacuation deals similar to the one in force in Homs.
Rebels began leaving their last bastion in the city of Homs in April under a Russian-backed deal with the regime.
The agreement underlines Bashar al-Assad's upper hand in the war, which was an early center of the popular uprising against Assad, as more rebel fighters opt to leave areas they have defended for years in deals that amount to negotiated withdrawals to other parts of the country.
Meanwhile, a new round of Syria peace talks opened Tuesday in Geneva as the Damascus regime fiercely denied it used a prison crematorium to hide evidence of thousands of murdered detainees, according to AFP.
Five previous rounds of UN-backed negotiations have failed to yield a political solution to the raging six-year conflict.
UN envoy Staffan de Mistura met with Syrian government negotiator Bashar al-Jaafari at the UN headquarters on Tuesday morning, followed by the opposition High Negotiations Committee (HNC) in the afternoon.
But hopes for a breakthrough remain dim, with tensions rising even further over US claims of new regime atrocities at the notorious Saydnaya prison near Damascus
