IS fighters being evacuated from south Damascus: monitor

A first batch of Islamic State group fighters left their final stronghold in the south of Syria's Damascus early today under a deal struck after weeks of fierce combat, a monitor said.

Six buses carried fighters and their families out of the IS-controlled Yarmuk Palestinian refugee camp and neighbouring Tadamun district, said Rami Abdel Rahman, head of the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

"The six buses left at dawn, heading east for the Syrian desert," Abdel Rahman told AFP.