Thousands more people were forcibly displaced from Syria’s East Ghouta on Tuesday, amid the destruction and killing from pro-Assad attacks and uncertainty over detentions.

About 7,000 people, most of them rebels and their families, left on 100 buses in the early morning. Another displacement is planned this week.

The transfer was the third since the opposition gave up almost all of the territory, held since 2012, last week. About 7,500 were moved from the town of Harasta and thousands were taken from Arbin.

The rebel faction Jaish al-Islam is holding out in Douma, the center of the opposition enclave, but is talks with Russia about a capitulation. The UN said about 70,000 to 80,000 people remain in the town.

Photos circulating on Tuesday show the extent of the devastation that eventually forced the surrender, after more than 1,600 people were killed and thousands wounded in the past seven weeks by the pro-Assad offensive, enabled by Russian airstrikes.

Harasta:

HARASTA 22-03-18 2

HARASTA DESTRUCTION 03-18 2

Meanwhile, reports continued of detentions by pro-Assad militia, after claims on Monday that 23 men were executed and five women seized in Kafr Batna and 150, including women and children, in Saqba. Photos yesterday showed men under guard in Saqba:

SAQBA MEN GUARDED

The UN said those now in regime-controlled “collective shelters” — estimated at about 80,000 people — face difficult conditions and “are not permitted to leave, until they have undergone a screening process and are able to prove a sponsor”.

The Red Cross warned of the risk from communicable diseases and said procedures for people to leave the shelters “should be accelerated”:

Many children who are already extremely weak are being exposed to further health hazards like diarrhea, lice and skin diseases. We have seen many children who had to walk many kilometers barefoot or in completely worn-out shoes.

There were contrasting images in northern Hama Province in northwest Syria, as volunteers received the displaced. One photo showed a White Helmets volunteer carrying baby Bayan, whose mother was killed amid airstrikes four days before the removal:

WHITE HELMET HARASTA BABY 03-18

WHITE HELMETS DISPLACED KIDS 03-18

Claims are circulating this morning of overnight strikes by Russian warplanes on camps for the displaced:

Regime: We Will Take Idlib…and Raqqa…and Golan Heights

Challenging not only the Syrian opposition but also the US, Turkey, and Israel, the Assad regime’s UN Ambassador Bashar al-Ja’afari has said it will reclaim areas from opposition-held Idlib Province to Afrin — captured by a Turkish-rebel force from Kurdish militia last week — to Raqqa to the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights.

Al-Jaafari confirmed the regime’s intention to break “de-escalation zones”, declared by its ally Russia, with further operations for Idlib in the northwest and the area near the Golan Heights in the southwest.

Russia has already joined the regime in setting aside a de-escalation zone to reoccupy the East Ghouta area near Damascus in a seven-week offensive.

But Ja’afari went farther with his proclamation that the regime will try to evict Turkey and rebel forces from the territory which they have taken in the Kurdish canton of Afrin in the northwest. And he challenged the US-backed, Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces with his statement over Raqqa, taken by the SDF from the Islamic State last autumn.