Tens of thousands return home after south Syria ceasefire deal

BEIRUT: Tens of thousands have returned to their homes in southern Syria since a ceasefire deal between regime ally Russia and rebels to end more than two weeks of deadly bombardment, a monitoring group said Sunday.

The deal was largely holding despite air strikes on two areas that killed four civilians, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitoring group said, and although rebel evacuations under the deal were postponed. President Bashar al-Assad's regime is determined to retake control of the key southern province of Daraa bordering Jordan and the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights, seven years after protests there sparked Syria's civil war.

Since June 19, a deadly regime bombardment campaign on the province had caused more than 320,000 people to flee their homes, according to the United Nations, many to the sealed border with Jordan.

On Friday, rebels and the regime announced a ceasefire deal, providing for opposition fighters to hand over their heavy weapons and paving the way for a government takeover of the province. More than 60,000 people have since taken to the roads from the Jordanian frontier, heading back to their homes in the east or west of the province, the Britain-based Observatory said. The UN humanitarian coordinator in Jordan, Anders Pederson, said most of the displaced along the Jordanian border had headed back inside Syria.

There are only "around 150 to 200 people right now at the border", he said.

On Sunday, the returns were continuing, the Observatory said, even as regime warplanes pounded two areas of Daraa province.

Three civilians were killed in air strikes on Um al-Mayazin, just five kilometres (three miles) north of the Jordanian border, said the Britain-based monitor.

Earlier, rebel fire on a regime convoy travelling near Um al-Mayazin on the highway from the border had killed several soldiers, Observatory director Rami Abdel Rahman said, without providing a toll. By Sunday afternoon, regime forces had taken control of the village, he and Syria´s state news agency SANA said.