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People walk between rubble in the city of Homs, Syria, 19 September 2016. According to media reports, the evacuation process of some 300 gunmen from the besieged neighborhood of al-Waer in Homs that was scheduled to be carried out on the same day has been postponed to the next day. The gunmen would head to the northwestern city of Idlib in accordance with a settlement agreement that was worked out between the Syrian government and the reconciliation committees in the area a year ago. A UN-backed three-phases agreement initiated in 2015 saw the evacuation of hundreds of residents from the neighborhood, whereby detainees held in government prisons would be released and the siege imposed on the area would be lifted. Al-Waer has been the only neighborhood under rebel control in Homs after government troops consolidated their grip over the city in 2014. An estimated 75 thousand people still live in al-Waer, down from about 300 thousand before the start of the Syrian conflict in 2011. (Photo by Youssef Badawi/EPA)
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