Wounded fighters, civilians evacuated from Syria

Evacuation took place under a UN-backed truce, with one group headed to Turkey and another en route to areas controlled by Bashar Assad

Hundreds of people from opposite sides in Syria's civil war were evacuated from contested areas under a UN-backed truce, with one group headed to Turkey and another en route to areas controlled by Syrian President Bashar Assad.

One group, with more than 100 rebels and family members, crossed from Syria into Lebanon in buses and ambulances, and then took off from Beirut airport for Turkey, a main ally of fighters battling to overthrow Assad, airport officials said yesterday. They spoke on condition of anonymity because they weren't authorised to discuss the operation.

The other group, residents of two insurgent-besieged Shiite villages in northern Syria, was evacuated first to Turkey in similar vehicles before departing for Beirut from Hatay airport, said Izzet Sahin, a spokesman for the Turkish Islamic charity organisation IHH. Activists and media reports say these people are headed to a suburb of the Syrian capital, Damascus, which is under the control of Assad's forces.

The truce deal reached in September, which provides for the transfer of thousands of Shiite and Sunni civilians and fighters, is one of a number of ground-level deals to end fighting in parts of Syria.

But the agreement has raised concerns about forced demographic change in Syria, a Sunni-majority country with Christian and other minorities, whose nearly five-year conflict has claimed over 250,000 lives and generated more than 4 million refugees.

Assad's family and other top officials hail from the Alawite minority, an offshoot of Shiite Islam, and the government is allied with Shiite-majority Iran and the Lebanese Shiite movement Hezbollah. The Sunni-led opposition has accused Assad and his allies of trying to clear Sunnis out of government-held areas.

The fighters and family members who were evacuated from the predominantly Sunni town of Zabadani are Sunni Muslims, and Syrian state TV said the group included many wounded fighters. The evacuees from the northern villages of Foua and Kfarya are Shiites.

In a statement, the UN in Syria said more than 450 people had been evacuated in total, including 338 people from the two Shiite villages and 125 people from the Zabadani area.

"Today's humanitarian action shows that even in the middle of fierce conflicts, agreements can be reached, solely for the purpose of alleviating human suffering," said Marianne Gasser, head of the International Committee of the Red Cross Delegation in Syria, which helped facilitate the evacuation.

But as the evacuations were taking place, twin bombings struck a government-held neighbourhood in Homs, killing at least 19 people and wounding more than a hundred, according to state TV. The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which relies on local Syrian activists, said the blasts killed 32 and wounded 90. It was not immediately possible to reconcile the differing casualty figures.