Rebels leave Ghouta as their bastion crumbles

Eastern Ghouta's six-year rebel rule was in its dying moments Friday as fighters evacuated one of the Syrian enclave's three remaining pockets and a deal was reached for another. A blistering regime assault since February 18 on the last opposition bastion outside Damascus has splintered remaining rebel territory into three shrinking pockets, each held by different factions.
Damascus and its ally Moscow have implemented a "leave or die" strategy with deadly air strikes on the enclave. For the second consecutive day on Friday, rebels quit one pocket while state media said a deal had been reached for the evacuation of a second one.
The deal provides for "the transfer of nearly 7,000 people, fighters and their families" from an area in the south of the enclave held by the Islamist group Faylaq al-Rahman, state television said. It will empty a southern area of Eastern Ghouta that includes the towns of Zamalka, Arbin and Ain Tarma, it said, with evacuations set to begin at 9:00 am (0700 GMT) on Saturday.
A deal, struck with another group for the smaller pocket of Harasta, began on Thursday and talks are under way for the third and final pocket, which includes Eastern Ghouta's main town of Douma. Faylaq al-Rahman group, which agreed to a ceasefire late Thursday following another wave of deadly air strikes, confirmed the agreement.
The deal came after Russian air strikes using "incendiary munitions" hit the town of Arbin late Thursday, killing 37 civilians, according to the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights war monitor. AFP reporters saw similar munitions fall on Douma. But Russia denied it was carrying out any such strikes.
"Russian aviation is not striking residential areas of Eastern Ghouta and especially it is not using incendiary weapons," the Russian defence ministry said. The first batch of fighters to quit Ghouta under a Russian-brokered deal were bused out on Thursday and started arriving in the northwestern province of Idlib on Friday.
An AFP reporter in the province, the last still largely outside government control, saw the first buses arrive at a camp after spending the night on the edge of rebel-held territory. Around 400 fighters from the Islamist group Ahrar al-Sham and hundreds of their relatives were bused out of Harasta, a modus operandi the regime has used several times in the seven-year-old war.
On Friday, a further 30 buses carrying hundreds of fighters and civilians from Harasta awaited in a buffer zone to move into regime-held territory, state television said. At least 37 civilians were killed in Russian strikes using "incendiary weapons" late Thursday in Arbin, said the Observatory, which relies on a wide network of sources on the ground.
Another 38 were killed on Thursday in other bombardment on the same southern pocket controlled by Faylaq al-Rahman.