The last group of people who migrated from the town of Al-Hamah in the Rif Dimashq governorate near the Syrian capital arrived in the Idlib governorate yesterday morning. According to the Syrian opposition, the operation to evacuate another suburb, the Qudsiya suburb, will be completed on Saturday (today) when the last group of armed fighters and their families who have chosen to move to Idlib voluntarily will do so. Those who have been forced to leave because of their presence on the “black list” which was drawn up by the Syrian regime will also leave.

According to what a member of the local council who left the town of Qudsiya yesterday told Asharq Al-Awsat, “the black list includes 150 people, mostly from the local council and opposition fighters. Some of them left on Thursday and the rest are expected to leave on Saturday (today) at the latest after the necessary arrangements have been made”. The source confirmed that after the regime received information that a number of them were refusing to leave, aircraft began to hover over the region in a threatening manner. This was after it directly threatened people who failed to leave and told them that the entire region would be subjected to indiscriminate shelling.

A member of the local council told Asharq Al-Awsat that “there are about 500 people, mostly fighters or army defectors who have accepted to stay in the towns of Qudsiya and Al-Hamah (in order to settle their statuses) for a period of six months by handing over their weapons, returning to the ranks of the regime’s forces and serving in the military which they had failed to perform (previously).”