DAMASCUS: More than 1,000 people quit a rebel-held district of Damascus Monday, its governor said, in the final phase of a deal bringing Syria’s government closer to controlling the entire capital. The evacuations from the northern neighborhood of Barzeh are part of a so-called “reconciliation” agreement for three opposition-held districts of Damascus.

Under such deals, fighters and civilians are granted safe passage to other rebel-held territory in exchange for an end to bombing and siege.

The agreement has allowed Syria’s government to declare control over the Damascus districts of Qaboun and Tishrin, and Monday the last evacuees left Barzeh.

“The last phase of the reconciliation deal for Barzeh is complete, with the departure of 1,012 people including 455 armed men,” Damascus governor Beshr Assaban told state news agency SANA.

“This will allow state institutions to return to the neighborhood,” Assaban said.

The agreement was struck earlier this month and had already seen more than 5,000 people – nearly half of them rebels – leave Barzeh in several waves.

Like the thousands who left Qaboun and Tishrin, most evacuees will head to Idlib province, a rebel stronghold in northwest Syria bordering Turkey, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. Some would go to Jarablus, a town that Turkey-backed rebels control along Syria’s northern border.

There are now only a handful of areas in Damascus that remain outside government control.

Rebels hold part of the heavily damaged Jobar district in the east, and in the south, the Tadamon and Hajar al-Aswad neighborhoods as well as the Palestinian refugee camp of Yarmouk are now mostly controlled by militants.

The evacuation deals follow a pattern of similar agreements in towns and villages around Damascus, as well as in third city Homs.

Assad has promoted local evacuation deals for rebel bastions in what the state calls “reconciliation” deals as a way of reducing bloodshed in the six-year conflict. Residents can stay on in those areas if they agree to submit to government rule.

The United Nations and the Syrian opposition have criticized both the use of sieges that have preceded such deals and the evacuations as amounting to forcible displacement.

Damascus has been insulated from the worst violence of Syria’s war, which has killed more than 470,000 people since it began with anti-government protests in March 2011.

The government has made securing control of the rebel districts in the capital a key priority.