BBC:
Rebel forces in southern Syria have reportedly captured most of the Deraa region – the birthplace of the 2011 uprising against President Bashar al-Assad.
A UK-based war monitor reports that the “local factions” were able to take control of many military sites there following “violent battles” with government forces.
According to the Reuters news agency, rebel sources saying they had reached a deal for the army to withdraw and for military officials to be given safe passage to the capital, Damascus – roughly 100km (62 miles) away.
The BBC has been unable to independently verify these reports, which come as Islamist-led rebels in northern Syria claimed to have reached the outskirts of the city of Homs.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR), a UK-based war monitor, said on Friday that the rebels in the south now control more than 90% of the Deraa region and that only the Sanamayn area is still in government hands.
Deraa city has both strategic and symbolic importance. It is a provincial capital and is close to the main crossings on the Jordanian border, while also being where pro-democracy protests erupted in 2011 – sparking the country’s ongoing civil war, in which more than half a million people have been killed.
Jordan’s interior minister said the country had closed its side of the border as “a result of the surrounding security conditions in Syria’s south”.
Elsewhere, Kurdish-led forces say they have taken the city of Deir Ezzor, the government’s main foothold in the vast desert in east of the country.
