Relief for Aleppo as deal allows people to leave
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SYRIAN rebels and pro-government forces reached a deal yesterday to resume evacuations from east Aleppo in exchange for people being allowed to leave two Shi’ite villages besieged by insurgents.
Some buses and Red Crescent vehicles arrived at the entrance to the villages of al-Foua and Kefraya soon after the deal was announced.
However, five buses were attacked and burnt on their way to the villages, most of whose residents are Shi’ite Muslims, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights and Syrian state media said.
State television broadcast pictures of flames coming from the green buses that have come to be synonymous with evacuations in Syria.
State media said armed terrorists carried out the attack. Rebel officials said an angry crowd of people was responsible.
Buses also began to arrive in eastern Aleppo, state media said, showing live footage.
The Aleppo evacuation ground to a halt on Friday after a disagreement between rebels and the coalition of forces fighting for President Bashar al-Assad’s government, who wanted people to be allowed to leave the two villages.
More than 15,000 people gathered in a square in east Aleppo yesterday to wait for buses to arrive and take them to rebel-held areas outside the city. Many had spent the night sleeping in the streets in freezing temperatures.
According to Syria’s al-Ikhbariya TV news, about 1,200 civilians would initially be evacuated from east Aleppo and a similar number from the two villages.
A document cited by al-Manar television said the entire deal would see 2,500 citizens leave al-Foua and Kefraya in two batches, in exchange for the evacuation of people from east Aleppo in two corresponding batches.
Following this, a further 1,500 would leave al-Foua and Kefraya in exchange for the evacuation of 1,500 from the towns of Madaya and Zabadani near Lebanon, which are besieged by pro-government forces.
Once evacuees from the villages have safely arrived in government areas, Aleppo fighters and more of their family members would be allowed to leave, in return for subsequent batches of people departing al-Foua and Kefraya.
In the square in Aleppo’s Sukari district, every family had been given a number by organizers to allow them on buses when they arrive.
“Everyone is waiting until they are evacuated. They just want to escape,” said Salah al-Attar, a former teacher with his five children, wife and mother.
Thousands of people were evacuated last Thursday, the first to leave under a ceasefire deal that would end years of fighting for the city and mark a major victory for the Assad government.
The World Health Organization’s representative in Syria, Elizabeth Hoff, said a team was on its way to Ramousah.
Aleppo had been divided between government and rebel areas in the nearly six-year-long war. However, a lightning advance by the Syrian army and its allies began in mid-November following months of intense air strikes, forcing the insurgents out of most of the rebel-held territory within a matter of weeks.
The chaos surrounding the evacuation reflects the complexity of Syria’s civil war, with an array of groups and foreign interests involved on all sides.
Turkey has said Aleppo evacuees could be housed in a camp to be constructed near the Turkish border to the north.
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