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Ghouta ops 'nearly over'

Says Russia; talks with rebels on to evacuate last pockets

Reuters, Beirut
***WAR IN SYRIA
About 30,000 people evacuated from Ghouta to Idlib
O
UN says conditions in refugee shelters 'dire'**
The massive Russian-backed Syrian military offensive in suburbs east of Damascus is almost over, with rebels holed up in just a single town after abandoning the rest of the eastern Ghouta enclave, Moscow said yesterday.
A senior official for Jaish al-Islam, the faction that controls the last Ghouta town still in insurgent hands, Douma, said the group was still engaged in negotiations with Russia over the town's fate, which began several days ago.
Thousands of rebels have accepted Russian-brokered deals to leave other parts of the enclave in the past week with their families on government-supplied buses, giving them safe passage to other insurgent-held areas. Tens of thousands of other civilians have stayed behind to accept state rule, and tens of thousands more have fled across the frontline.
The collapse of rebel control in eastern Ghouta, after one of the fiercest campaigns of the seven year war, has delivered the insurgents their worst defeat since they were driven out of Aleppo in 2016.
Speaking at a weekly briefing, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said the "counter-terrorist
operation" in eastern Ghouta had nearly finished, RIA state news agency reported. She gave no details of negotiations with the rebels still holding out.
Despite some artillery fire on Douma on Wednesday, there has been no renewal of the army's withering bombardment and assault that stormed most of the rebel enclave in just a few weeks.
Daily convoys of buses have since made the 320km (200 miles) journey to Idlib carrying about 7,500 fighters and their families, 30,000 people in all, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based war monitor.
About 134,000 other people fled across front lines from rebel territory in eastern Ghouta into areas held by the government,
the Observatory said. Some 40,000 people remained in the towns it has recaptured so far.
On Thursday, the United Nations resident and humanitarian coordinator's office in Syria said in an emailed update that 75,000 civilians had been received in shelters and 47,000 civilians remained in them. It described conditions in the shelters - mostly unfinished buildings, hangars or schools - as "dire".
Assad and his allies say their offensive was needed to end the rule of Islamist militants over civilians and to stop rebel mortar fire on Damascus, which state television says has killed dozens in recent weeks. The Observatory says the government assault has killed more than 1,600 people.
Western countries and rights groups have accused the Syrian military of targeting civilian infrastructure and repeatedly using indiscriminate weapons including helicopter-dropped barrel bombs, chlorine gas and fire-setting incendiary munitions.
The Syrian and Russian governments deny all that and have accused the rebel groups of fabricating evidence of such attacks and of killing people who tried to flee their territory, which the insurgents deny.