BEIRUT, March 23, 2018 (Reuters) - Syrian rebels agreed to surrender a second besieged enclave in eastern Ghouta on Friday, state television reported, as their comrades in another insurgent pocket in the area continued their withdrawal after a month-long assault by the army. Capturing eastern Ghouta, near the capital Damascus, would be Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's biggest victory over the rebels since driving them from Aleppo in December 2016. His army's month-long attack on the enclave has splintered it into smaller besieged pockets, seizing most of its area and, according to a war monitor, killing more than 1,600 people. Insurgents in one of those pockets - the town of Harasta - began withdrawing in a convoy of buses for opposition territory in northwestern Syria on Thursday. More buses began to leave on Friday carrying fighters and their family members. Syrian state television broadcast their departure. From behind a half-drawn curtain, a woman in a headscarf could be seen gazing out through a spiderweb of bullet holes and cracks in the window of a bus as it prepared to carry her into exile. A small child peered through another window. Meanwhile, state television cited its own correspondent as reporting that rebels in a second pocket around the towns of Arbin, Jobar, Zamalka and Ein Terma had also agreed to leave. About 7,000 people would exit those areas including fighters carrying light weapons, while people who chose to stay would settle their affairs with the government, it reported. The spokesman of the dominant Failaq al-Rahman rebel group there, Wael Alwan, had earlier said it was negotiating with the government's ally Russia. "Today is a session to find a solution to end this human suffering, whatever the cost," he said on television. But bombs still fell on Friday on the most populous rebel-held area in eastern Ghouta, the besieged city of Douma, from which thousands of people have fled into government territory in recent days. After insurgents have surrendered the other two pockets, it will stand as the last battered and besieged rebel area in eastern Ghouta, itself the opposition's last major bastion near the capital. The Syrian army's assault to recapture the area has been one of the most intense in the seven-year war. It has been marked by tactics the army and its ally Russia have increasingly used to crush resistance - lay siege to an area, bombard it, launch a ground assault and finally offer the rebels and their families safe passage to the northwest. After helping turn the tide of the war in Assad's favor with air power and military support since its intervention in 2015, Russia has increasingly cast itself as a peace-broker. Russian representatives have played a role in negotiating local ceasefires and evacuations.
