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Ghouta: Assad forces conduct field executions as residents fear reprisal

(Zaman Al Wasl)- Syrian regime and allied militias conducted field executions in Kafr Batna against civilians after major raids on the newly-captured suburb in Eastern Ghouta, sources told Zaman al-Wasl Monday.

The regime force took almost 90 percent of the Eastern Ghouta after 38 days of deadliest offensive ever in the 7-year-old war where more than 1700 people killed and 105,000 people evacuated.

A pro-regime militia in Ghouta has made its own wanted-list that includes names of relief and aid workers to deliver it to the regime forces, saying those are sleeper cells and should be eliminated from Ghouta.

Local activists and resdients who refused to leave the eastern enclave of Damascus said regime forces are practicing acts of revenge and reprisal
 
About 150 people were arrested in the wide-range raids from Saqba and Kafr Batna.

The Syrian regime has used sieges and heavy bombardment followed by evacuation deals to recapture swathes of rebel-held territory.

The regime smashed the Ghouta enclave into three isolated pockets before it sought separate evacuation deals for each.

But with talks suspended, the fate of Douma residents remains uncertain.

 Meanwhile, Jaish al-Islam rebel faction denied on Monday that its fighters were ready to lay down their arms and leave Douma.

Rebels in Douma have expressed willingness to stop fighting and leave, a Russian general staff official said earlier, according to Russia's RIA news agency.

"[This] is a lie and devoid of truth," Mohammad Alloush said, the faction's political chief, Reuters reported. 

Russia's RIA news agency quoted a Russian General Staff official   as saying rebel fighters with the Jaish al-Islam in Douma have expressed readiness to lay down their arms and leave the town.

The official, Stanislav Gadzhimagomedov, said the group was in touch with Russian officers handling the negotiations and that the question of their departure was likely to be settled in the near future, RIA reported.
   
The evacuation is modeled on others in which rebels have surrendered swathes of territory around the capital and other major cities after years of siege and bombardment at the hands of Bashar Assad's forces. They have been helpless against the government's overwhelming artillery and air power, boosted with support from Iran's Revolutionary Guard and Russia's air force.

Rebels began evacuating another pocket of eastern Ghouta on Thursday. Some 7,000 people left the town of Harasta, bound for the rebel-held Idlib province in northern Syria.

The Syrian regime is giving rebels and male residents the choice to put down their weapons and sign up for military conscription or to leave with their families to rebel-held territories elsewhere in Syria. Tens of thousands across Syria have elected to leave with their families instead of serving in the army or risking arrest by the state's notoriously vindictive security services.

Critics say it amounts to forced displacement, and rewards brutal siege tactics that have deprived hundreds of thousands of civilians of food and medicine and subjected them to years of violence. U.N. inquiries and top U.N. officials have likened the tactics to war crimes and crimes against humanity.

The U.N. and the International Committee of the Red Cross have refused to facilitate the Eastern Ghouta evacuations.

  
-Detention Camps- 
 


As more than 105, 000 people have been evacuated from Eastern Ghouta, activists say the evacuees are suffering harsh humanitarian conditions in the mass detention camps.

Thousands of people were transferred to Adra area northeast of the capital where the regime had placed them in its facilities amid absence of most essential services, local activists and relatives said.

Mohammed al-Basha (a pseudonym) said his relatives who fled the town of Hammouriyah had been placed in al-Duwair centre with 6000 more people. 

Men and youth between (16-50) were put in detention, according to al-Basha.
  
Hossam al-Masri (a pseudonym), a relative of a detainee in at al-Duwair Center, said that the regime imposed strict restrictions on those wishing to visit relatives in the center, which required several security permits.

Al-Masri told Zaman al-Wasl that the regime has allowed number of families, mostly women and children under the age of 15, to leave to their relatives in Damascus.

 

Zaman Al Wasl
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