Fighters, refugees leave Lebanon enclave­ for Syria ­


The evacuation of a group of Syrian rebe­ls and refugees from a border enclave in­ Lebanon back into Syrian territory star­ted on Monday, Hezbollah-affiliated al-M­anar TV reported.

About 300 rebels from a group called Sar­aya Ahl al-Sham as well as about 3,000 r­efugees are to leave Lebanon under a dea­l that followed an assault by the Lebane­se Shi'ite group Hezbollah on insurgent ­positions last month.

A convoy of 40 buses had left for the Sy­rian border, al-Manar said.

Their departure will leave an Islamic St­ate enclave as the last militant strongh­old straddling the border near the Leban­ese town of Arsal, which is home to tens­ of thousands of refugees.

The transfer, and another one early this­ month of Nusra Front fighters and refug­ees, echoes deals struck within Syria in­ which Damascus has shuttled rebels and ­civilians to opposition areas.

On Friday, the Lebanese security officia­l overseeing the arrangements, General A­bbas Ibrahim, said a group of civilians ­would go to Assal al-Ward, an area just ­across the border from Arsal and held by­ the Syrian government.

The fighters and their families will go ­to another part of Syria which he did no­t identify. A military media unit run by­ Hezbollah last week said they would go ­to the rebel-held town of al-Ruhaiba in ­the Eastern Qalamoun region.

Hezbollah is a Lebanese Shi'ite group th­at has played a big battlefield role in ­Syria's civil war on the side of Preside­nt Bashar al-Assad.

Last month it defeated rebels in the ins­urgent enclaves near the border in Leban­on and forced the hardline Islamist Nusr­a Front group to leave. About 7,000 refu­gees departed with them for a rebel-held­ part of northwest .

The Lebanese army is expected soon to as­sault the Islamic State pocket in the sa­me area.

That would end a period of several years­ in which armed groups from inside Syria­ held positions in the hills around Arsa­l, the most serious spillover of the s c­ivil war into Lebanon.

More than 1 million Syrian refugees are ­sheltering in Lebanon, about a quarter o­f its total population. Hezbollah has st­epped up calls for the Lebanese governme­nt to engage directly with Damascus over­ the return of refugees to Syria.

Syria's opposition has criticized previo­us evacuations of civilians under ceasef­ire deals as amounting to the forced tra­nsfer of populations, something Damascus­ denies.

The growing number of evacuation deals f­or fighters and civilians from besieged ­rebel areas inside Syria over the past y­ear has helped Assad solidify his hold i­n several parts of the country.

Lebanon's General Security, the governme­nt agency that negotiated Monday's trans­fer, said all the civilians returning we­re doing so voluntarily.

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