At least 1,500 Syrian rebels and their families abandoned another long-held district just outside of Damascus on Sunday, as the army of President Bashar al-Assad and its allies push to seize full control of the capital and surrounding areas for the first time in nearly five years.
State media and witnesses said the evacuation began at dawn, less than a day after government forces captured the Qaboun district, and just days after hundreds of other beleaguered rebel fighters and their families departed two other nearby districts.
A government deal facilitating the Qaboun evacuation was announced late Saturday. It replicates earlier agreements under which rebels were granted safe passage to rebel-held territory near the Turkish border in exchange for an end to weeks of shelling and airstrikes by Syrian and allied Russian warplanes.
Government forces have pressed for several months to recapture rebel districts north and east of Damascus, and analysts say they succeeded only after discovering and destroying underground tunnels that connected the three neighborhoods.
As civil war raged near the capital, Kurdish-led Syrian forces far to the north pressed a separate offensive against Islamic State extremists just outside the de facto IS capital, Raqqa.