Al-Nusra Front revealed on Sunday in a media broadcast aired on its affiliate outlet, Ibaa News Agency, that the Syrian regime had committed to releasing some 104 of its members, among which were 24 women. All detainees will be released from prisons in Homs, Hama and Damascus.
Meanwhile, Lebanon’s “Hezbollah” has entered the third phase of implementing the Arsal agreement. The militants of Saraya Ahl Sham have begun leaving Arsal’s outskirts after a turbulent 48 hours, which included their leadership stalling the evacuation.
According to Lebanon’s state-run National News Agency, some 400 fighters began leaving the Wadi Hmeid area of Arsal for the eastern slopes of the Qalamoun Mountains in Syria. “The Lebanese security forces began Sunday the implementation for sending off 400 armed terrorists from Saraya Ahl Sham with their families,” an NNA correspondent said.
The NNA added that the fighters would leave Arsal heading for Ruhaiba in Syria with their light weapons. It is to note that the Lebanese Red Cross will also accompany Saraya Ahl-Sham to the Lebanese-Syrian border. Reporters were not allowed to enter the area. A media operation run by Hezbollah posted video of a caravan of buses rolling through the dusty hills.
Buses were expected to begin transporting 3,000 Syrian fighters and civilian refugees from a remote area in northeastern Lebanon to Syria on Monday morning. The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said it was coordinating aid for 5,288 people who had arrived in northwestern Syria from the Arsal area under the earlier deal to transfer 9,000 people.
The violent clashes are ongoing in several areas in the northern and eastern deserts of al-Sukhnah in the eastern countryside of Homs, and other areas at the administrative borders between the eastern countryside of Homs and the southern countryside of Deir Ezzor between the regime forces and their allied militiamen of Syrian and non-Syrian nationalities against the “Islamic State” organization, and the clashes are accompanied with renewed aerial and missile shelling on the clash area, and sounds of explosions were heard that was caused by a car bomb by ISIS in Hamima area in al-Sukhnah desert, and there is information about human losses and injured in the ranks of both parties.
The ongoing clashes allowed the regime forces, through aerial and missile cover allowed the regime forces to control Dowakhila Valley area in the southern countryside of Deir Ezzor on the administrative borders with the eastern countryside of Homs, which is 10 km and half away from T2 station.
Also the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights published that violent clashes are taking place between the “Islamic State” organization on one hand, and the regime forces and gunmen loyal to them of Syrian, Lebanese, Iraqi, Afghan and Palestinian nationalists on the other, in areas in the north and east of the desert of Al-Sukhnah city in the eastern countryside of Homs and near the outskirts of the northern area of Wahat Al-Kum in the administrative triangle border between Al-Raqqah, Homs and Deir Ezzor, follwing the aerial landing carried out by the regime forces with an aerial cover of Russian helicopters and warplanesin the area of Al-Kun which also enabled them to penetrate into the borders of Homs province from the north-eastern side.
Clashes are also taking place between the both parties on several areas in the eastern countryside of Hama, the clashes accompanied by intensive air strikes of Russian warplanes and the regime’s warplanes and their intensive and continuous shelling on the clash areas as well as the missile shelling and the exchange of targeting between the both parties.
The regime forces are seeking through these clashes in areas mentioned above, to penetrate more and decrease areas controlled by the organization one by one where they approached to besiege completely on thousands of kilometers controlled by the “Islamic State” organization in the provinces of Homs and Hama, while the organization seeks fiercely to avoid this siege in by defending its positions and carrying out counter-attacks against the regime forces to show its abilities to attack.