Syrian rebels resume withdrawal from last Homs bastion: monitor

Hundreds of rebels left their last bastion in Syria's Homs city on Monday, resuming an evacuation expected to be among the largest of its kind under a Russian-backed deal with the government, state media and a monitor said. Heavy fighting between rebel groups and the army further north in Hama province over the weekend had delayed their departure from the city's al-Waer district, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said. The evacuation began last week with the Syrian government shuttling hundreds of people from the district in Homs, which was an early center of the 2011 uprising that spiraled into war.