Syrian authorities have evacuated Bedouin families from the Druze-majority city of Sweida, after a ceasefire in the southern province halted bloody clashes between the communities.
An AFP correspondent outside the devastated provincial capital saw a convoy including buses enter Sweida and then exit again carrying civilians.
The evacuees, including women and children, were headed for reception centres in neighbouring Daraa province and to the capital Damascus, in coordination with the Syrian Red Crescent.
State news agency SANA said 1,500 people from Bedouin tribes were to be evacuated.
The ceasefire announced Saturday put an end to the sectarian violence that has left more than 1,100 dead in a week, according to a monitor.
Clashes began between Druze and Bedouin tribes, who have had tense relations for decades, and were complicated by the intervention of Sunni Arab tribes who converged on Sweida in support of the Bedoiun.
Witnesses, Druze factions and a monitor have accused government forces of siding with the Bedouin and committing abuses including summary executions when they entered Sweida last week.
"We reached a formula that allows us to defuse the crisis by evacuating the families of our compatriots from the Bedouin and the tribes who are currently in Sweida city," the province's internal security chief Ahmad Dalati told state television.
The ceasefire was announced Saturday but effectively only began yesterday, after Bedouin and tribal fighters withdrew from part of Sweida city and Druze groups retook control.
The announcement came hours after the United States said it had negotiated a ceasefire between Syria's government and Israel, which had bombed government forces in both Sweida and Damascus earlier in the week.
Israel, which has its own Druze community, has said it was acting in defence of the group, as well as to enforce its demands for the total demilitarisation of Syria's south.
The deal allowed the deployment of government security forces in Sweida province but not its main city.
Yesterday, a first humanitarian aid convoy entered the city which has seen power and water cuts and shortages of fuel, food and medical supplies.
Nearly 100 bodies yet to be identified at Syrian hospital
Dozens of bodies are still waiting to be identified at the main hospital in Sweida city as the death count resulting from days of sectarian violence continues to rise.
"We have handed 361 bodies over to family members, but we still have 97 unidentified corpses," a forensic medicine official at a facility said on condition of anonymity.
Witnesses, Druze factions and a monitor have accused government forces of siding with the Bedouin and committing abuses including summary executions when they entered Sweida last week.
More than 1,100 people, most of them Druze fighters and civilians, have been killed, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitor, whose toll also includes several hundred government security personnel.
Health authorities have not released a comprehensive death toll.
More than 450 bodies had been taken to Sweida's main hospital by yesterday evening as bodies were still being collected from streets and homes in the city.
"The dead bodies sent a terrible smell through all the floors of the hospital," said nurse Hisham Breik, who said he had not left the facility since the violence began.
"The situation has been terrible. We couldn't walk around the hospital without wearing a mask," he said, adding that the wounded included women, children and the elderly.
Medical personnel have been working in tough conditions at the hospital, which has seen clashes around it and has been flooded with wounded, some of whom were lying in the corridors.
Bodies have yet to be removed from villages in Sweida province's north and west, the hospital administration and health workers said.
The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said that hospitals and health centres in Sweida province were out of service, with "reports of unburied bodies raising serious public health concerns".
Humanitarian access to Sweida "remains highly constrained", it said a statement.
