DAMASCUS: A U.N.-sponsored deal to give safe passage to more than 2,000 Islamic State fighters and other hardline insurgents holed up in rebel-held south Damascus neighbourhoods has been suspended, Lebanese Hezbollahs TV station said on Saturday.
It said the deal fell through after a top rebel commander, Zahran Alloush, was killed in an air strike on Friday. The convoy carrying the fighters had been due to pass through territory he controlled en route to their ultimate destination of Raqqa, the de facto capital of Islamic State in northern Syria.
The TV report said coaches that had arrived on Friday to pick up the fighters and at least 1,500 family members had turned back.
Powerful Syrian rebel chief Zahran Alloush was killed in a regime air strike east of Damascus Friday, dealing blows to both the nearly five-year uprising and a fragile peace process.
Alloush, 44, was the commander of the Jaish al-Islam movement, the predominant opposition faction in the Eastern Ghouta rebel bastion east of Damascus.
He and five other commanders were killed in an air strike that targeted one of their meetings in Eastern Ghouta today, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said. Agencies
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