Syria evacuates besieged towns as nervous world ON EDGE

In the first phase of the deal, about 8,000 people under siege in the government-held northwestern towns of Foah and Kefraya will be bused out, while about 3,400 people living in two rebel-held towns near Damascus, Madaya and Zabadani, will also be given safe passage.

And some 2,350 opposition fighters have been moved from two opposition-held areas near the capital, Damascus.

Madaya resident Amjad al-Maleh, speaking from a departing bus, told AFP that rebels among the evacuees had been allowed to keep light weapons.

Men, women and children packed onto the buses, expressing despair at leaving their homes with no way of knowing when they might return.

More than two thousand rebel fighters, their families and other civilians are in the convoy that left Madaya early Friday in the direction of rebel-controlled Idlib, according to the London-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR).

This evacuation agreement has been called the "Four Towns Agreement".

"Honestly, when we left Madaya, I felt sadness, anger, and sorrow".

"My home was the most handsome place in Syria, but we leave so no one else has to die here", said one man, speaking on the condition of anonymity to protect relatives who would now fall under government control.

Buses evacuated thousands of people from two rebel-besieged Shia villages in northwest Syria on Friday and rebels began to leave two towns near Damascus with their families, under a deal between the government and insurgents.

But there have been other cases of expulsion of the government's opponents to the country's contested northern provinces.

"The first buses that moved were the ones leaving Idlib province".

In the past year alone, the government has uprooted residents and gunmen from the towns of Moadamiyeh, Hameh, Qudsaya, Darayya and the Barada Valley around the capital, as well as once rebellious neighborhoods of Aleppo and Homs, Syria's largest and third-largest cities, respectively.

Meanwhile, buses carrying some 4,000 regime loyalists set out from Idlib's Kefraya and Al-Fuaa districts - both of which remain surrounded by opposition forces - towards Aleppo.

For the displaced, the war goes on.

"I have conviction that we will be back", Hossam, the man from Madaya, said in the video.

According to reports, some 20 areas across the war-torn country remain under siege by Assad regime forces. Russia, Syria and Iran have strongly warned the United States against launching new strikes on Syria.

Many people are reported to have died as a result of shortages of food or medicine.

The US maintains that its airstrike was a response to the alleged chemical attack in rebel-held Khan Sheikhoun, by the Syrian government.