Beirut/damascus: Zahran Alloush, head of the powerful Jaish Al Islam Syrian rebel group, was killed yesterday east of Damascus, a monitoring group and Syria’s opposition said.
His death “stands as one of the most significant opposition losses” of Syria’s nearly five-year uprising, analyst Charles Lister said on Twitter.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitor said Alloush and five other commanders were killed “in an air strike that targeted one of their meetings in Eastern Ghouta.”
The death of Alloush, 44, was confirmed on Twitter by the head of Syria’s opposition National Coalition, who posted a message of condolence.
Syria’s state television channel also reported the death by air strike, but did not say who had carried out the raid.
Jaish Al Islam is the most prominent rebel faction in the Eastern Ghouta region, an opposition bastion east of the capital, and was recently represented at landmark opposition talks in Saudi Arabia.
The Syrian government regularly refers to the group as “terrorists”.
Alloush’s death comes after Syria’s army announced a massive operation to retake rebel-held Eastern Ghouta. The regime’s forces have been backed by Russian air strikes since September 30.
Jaish Al Islam was known to have extremist views and to have supported the establishment of an Islamic state before recently moving towards a more moderate position.
Alloush spent at least two years in Syrian prisons before being released in a general amnesty in June 2011.
Two thousand Syrian Islamist fighters are expected to be evacuated soon from besieged, rebel-held areas of southern Damascus in a deal brokered by the United Nations, a Hezbollah TV station said yesterday.
The deal marks a success for the government of President Bashar Al Assad, increasing its chances of reasserting control over a strategic area just 4km south of the centre of the capital.
It also highlights the increasing efforts of the UN and foreign governments to bring about local ceasefires and safe-passage agreements as steps towards the wider goal of ending Syria’s civil war, in which more than 250,000 people have been killed in nearly five years of fighting.
The besieged militants include fighters of Islamic State and the Nusra Front, Al Qaeda’s offshoot in Syria. Hezbollah’s Manar TV said 18 buses had arrived to start taking them and 1,500 family members to areas under the control of IS and other rebel groups. It was not clear whether the buses were provided by the UN or by the Syrian army.
The rebels’ capitulation was forced by a government siege over several years that squeezed the flow of food and humanitarian aid, starving many people to death in what rights group Amnesty International has described as war crimes.
Manar said the fighters would also be handing in their heavy weapons to the Syrian army under what it said was a multi-party deal under UN auspices.
Manar is the official mouthpiece of Hezbollah, a Lebanese Shi’ite group which is a major ally of Assad and has sent its forces to fight alongside government troops.
It later said the evacuation “awaited completion of some arrangements”.
Separately, the Syrian army said yesterday it had fought its way close to the strategic, rebel-held Aleppo-Damascus highway - its latest gain in a major offensive supported by Iranian-backed Shia militias and Russian air power.
Agencies
