BEIRUT // Syrian government forces seized control of the village of Zalaqiyat north of Hama on Sunday amid a heavy bombardment, despite a deal to reduce fighting in the country six-year-old civil war.
Clashes have raged in the countryside north of Hama for over a month, since rebels there launched an assault against government forces that was quickly reversed and has now turned into an army push into areas the insurgents gained last year.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said 11 pro-government fighters were killed in the Zalaqiyat advance.
Fighting also took place in the Qaboun district of Damascus, said the Observatory, a Britain-based group that monitors the war in Syria via a network of contacts around the country.
Under an agreement that took effect at midnight on Friday, fighting was intended to subside over six months in four “de-escalation zones” where violence between the army and rebels has been most intense.
The deal was agreed during ceasefire talks in Kazakhstan between Russia and Iran, the Syrian government’s main foreign backers, and Turkey, the main rebel sponsor.
Syria’s government said it supported the proposal but added that it would continue to fight what it called terrorist groups around the country. Syrian president Bashar Al Assad has said previously that all the rebel groups fighting to oust him are terrorists.
Opposition groups rejected the deal, saying the special zones threatened Syria’s territorial integrity, that any role for Iran was unacceptable, and that Russia had been unable to get Mr Al Assad to respect previous ceasefire agreements.
Northern Hama province is in one the four areas outlined in the deal, although it was not clear if it includes Zalaqiyat. Russia has said it will publish maps of the de-escalation zones by June 4.
Meanwhile, as agreement was reached to transfer wounded fighters of Al Qaeda’s former Syrian affiliate from Yarmouk, in the southern suburbs of Damascus, to rebel-held Idlib province, the Hizbollah-affiliated Al Manar TV station reported on Sunday.
The agreement is the second phase of an earlier deal to evacuate people from two towns besieged by rebels, and two towns besieged by pro-government forces, Al Manar said. The first phase was implemented last month.
The wounded fighters and some others accompanying them would form a group of about 50, reported the television channel, which is based in Lebanon. Hizbollah, also from Lebanon, is a close military ally of Mr Al Assad.
The fighters are from the group that called itself Jabhat Al Nusra until it formally broke tieswith Al Qaeda last year and renamed itself Jabhat Fatah Al Sham. It has since joined a number of other hardline militant groups under the name Hayat Tahrir Al Sham.
Both Al Nusra and Tahrir Al Sham have at times fought alongside moderate rebel groups, including those that operate under the banner of the Free Syrian Army, and at times have clashed with them.
Yarmouk, in the southern suburbs of Damascus, is the location of a large Palestinian refugee camp. Parts of the area are held by the government, parts by rebels including Tahrir Al Sham, and parts by ISIL.
An earlier deal involved evacuating civilians from the rebel-besieged Shiite towns of Kefraya and Foua in Idlib province in return for the departure of civilians and insurgent fighters from Zabadani and Madaya, near Damascus.
Completed late last month, that agreement was the largest and most complex so far in a series of evacuation deals for besieged areas that have grown more common over the past year.
While Mr Al Assad’s government has praised such deals as a way to reduce bloodshed, the rebels have condemned them as a means to impose demographic change by forcing large numbers of civilians to leave pro-opposition areas.
The United Nations, which has not been party to the agreements, has also voiced concern that they amount to forced displacement.
* Reuters and Associated Press
