A temporary ceasefire is in place to allow women, children and the elderly to evacuate the Islamic State-held area of al-Hajar al-Aswad in south Damascus, Syrian state media said on Monday citing a military source.
The Syrian army and its allies have been battling for weeks to recapture the tiny Islamic State enclave, the last area outside government control in or around the capital.
The temporary ceasefire came into effect on Sunday night and will end at 12pm local time and the army offensive will start again immediately, state media cited the military source as saying.
The activist group, the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, reported early on Monday that buses had already started leaving south Damascus for the Islamic State areas in eastern Syria.
The group said that IS fighters were among those who had left.
“A second batch of elements from the Islamic State organisation left after midnight,” the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.
“They are heading to a pocket in the desert still under the control of the extremist organisation,” the Britain-based monitoring group said.
Islamic State now controls only the tiny pocket in south Damascus and two besieged desert areas in eastern Syria, while another insurgent group that has pledged loyalty to it holds a small enclave in the southwest.
Pro-Syrian government forces have staged an intensive operation to recover Islamic State’s south Damascus pocket in al-Hajar al-Aswad and the adjacent Yarmouk Palestinian refugee camp since driving rebels from eastern Ghouta in April.
In other developments, large explosions were heard south of the capital overnight Sunday at an area said to hold a security facility used by Iran, Sky News’ Arabic service reported.
The report follows a string of violent blasts at a Hama air base on Friday that the Observatory said killed at least 11 pro-Syrian government fighters. The origin of the blasts was not clear.
Israel has repreatedly targeted miltiary sites that allegedly have an Iranian presence.