Convoys carrying wounded Syrian fighters leave the Lebanese border crossing point of Masnaa, Lebanon, on Monday.

A convoy of more than 120 rebels and wounded from the flashpoint Syrian border town of Zabadani crossed into Lebanon on Monday as part of a UN-backed truce, an AFP journalist said.

The convoy included seven buses and 22 ambulances and was accompanied by Lebanese security forces from the Masnaa border crossing, the journalist at the scene said.

Bashar Assad’s regime has agreed to several cease-fires with fighter groups in the past but Monday’s evacuation plan was one of the most elaborate in the nearly five-year war.

The United Nations has been pushing for such local deals as global powers pursue wider efforts to resolve a conflict that left more than 250,000 dead and forced millions from their homes.

More than 450 fighters and civilians, including wounded, began quitting three flashpoint areas in Syria as part of a six-month truce reached in September.

According to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitoring group, more than 120 fighters and wounded on Monday began leaving Zabadani, the last fighter bastion on Syria’s border with Lebanon.

They were to travel across the border to Lebanon and fly from Beirut to Turkey, before traveling back into opposition-held areas in Syria, Observatory head Rami Abdel Rahman said. Another 335 people, including civilians, began traveling from two regime-controlled villages in northwestern Syria to other government areas, also via the neighboring countries, he said.

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