The last rebels were leaving the centre of the battleground city of Homs yesterday, handing a symbolic victory to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.
Around 1,000 rebel fighters have left the Old City of Homs under the unprecedented negotiated evacuation that began Wednesday, according to figures given to AFP by provincial governor Talal Barazi.
But seven buses carrying the last 300 fighters were stopped because militant fighters were refusing to allow food supplies into two rebel-besieged Shiite towns in Aleppo province, the Observatory said.
The pullout, following an army siege of nearly two years, leaves the rebels confined to a single district on the outskirts of a city that what was once a bastion of the uprising.
Barazi said negotiations were well advanced for the rebels to leave that neighbourhood too in the coming weeks.
But it is the first time that rebel fighters have withdrawn from an area they controlled under an accord with the government.
The Syrian government allowed the remaining rebels in Homs to pull out with their personal weapons in return for the release of 40 Alawite women and children, an Iranian woman and 30 soldiers held hostage by rebels elsewhere in Syria, a rebel spokesman said.
It is the first time that rebel fighters have withdrawn from an area they controlled under an accord with the government.
