2015 Zabadani cease-fire agreement

The 2015 Zabadani cease-fire agreement between Syrian Opposition and Syrian Government forces was achieved on September 24, 2015, with UN mediation, following the Battle of Zabadani (2015).

Agreement

On 24 September 2015, more than 2 months after the Battle of Zabadani (2015) began, the UN announced that an agreement between the warring parties had finally been reached after repeated mediation efforts. Per the agreement, the remaining entrenched rebels are to withdraw from Syrian government besieged Al-Zabadani and control of the town to the Syrian government while surrendering all weapons, save for light handguns, and withdrawing to the Idlib Province. Conversely, civilians (approximately 10,000 people) still remaining inside the rebel-besieged Shi'ite villages of Al-Fou’aa and Kafraya are to be evacuated. Control of the villages would not be surrendered to the rebels; however, as approximately 4,000 pro-government troops would remain in the villages. The plan was expected to take 6 months to be fully implemented, during which time extended ceasefires are expected to be upheld in each respective area. Evacuation of wounded from both sides was expected to begin as early as 25 September 2015. An additional stipulation denotes the release of 500 rebel captives from Syrian government-held prisons. The agreement would be overseen by the United Nations office in Damascus.[1][2][3]

Implementation timeline

On 26 September 2015, the first bus transport evacuating the rebel combatants to Idlib began leaving Al-Zabadani.[4]

SOHR reported on 26 September that a rebel fighter had been killed in a firefight with the NDF near the villages of Al-Fou’aa and Kafraya.[5] The ceasefire was said to still be in effect in spite of a couple of violations on 27 September 2015.[6]

After the implementation of the ceasefire, the besieging Hezbollah and the SAA troops redirected their attention towards the remaining parts of the Qalamoun Mountains still under rebel control, namely a smaller area in the Jaroud Rankous, located in southern Qalamoun, and larger area located in Jaroud Qarah, in northern Qalamoun. The Hezbollah also set itself out to recapture the Lebanese border-district of Arsal, from where the Jabhat Al-Nusra and ISIL have been receiving much of its reinforcement into the Qalamoun Mountains.[7] However, on 10 October, the truce was jeopardized by rebel groups, claiming the truce had been made "irrelevant" following Russia's entry to the Syrian Civil War.[8]

See also

References

Coordinates: 33°43′30″N 36°05′50″E / 33.7250°N 36.0972°E / 33.7250; 36.0972

This article is issued from Wikipedia - version of the Thursday, March 17, 2016. The text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share Alike but additional terms may apply for the media files.