Children scream as gunmen pick them off
Final hours of fighting in Aleppo produce the Syrian civil war’s most shameful, sickening acts
The day that was supposed to mark an end to Aleppo’s violence started with some of its most despicable acts of all. The sun had barely risen when an ambulance was attacked as it tried to evacuate injured children. The rebels blamed an Iranian-backed militia. Whoever carried it out is guilty of a war crime.
Footage filmed for ITV News showed the harrowing scenes as children screamed in terror and cowed in a building, as the gunman tried to pick them off. Those responsible must have known that a ceasefire was supposed to be in place and that the battle of Aleppo was in its final few hours. Yet they pulled the trigger anyway.
The images of injured children being shot at while they attempt to board an ambulance is sickening. They are scenes that should shame world leaders who had failed for four and a half years to end the fighting in Syria’s largest city.
I watched that morning from a hotel overlooking the remaining rebel enclave as President Bashar al-Assad’s gunners continued to take potshots at the crumbling buildings on the front line.
The first planned evacuation on Wednesday quickly unravelled amid arguments over the precise terms. It quickly resulted in a fierce firefight followed by heavy shelling and airstrikes. I witnessed a bright white substance burning for several minutes after one attack on the ever-diminishing rebel enclave; possibly evidence of white phosphorous shells being used.
By Thursday, the shelling had stopped once again, as a second attempt to end the siege began.
Finally, 25 buses got ready to enter rebel-held territory. In the next five hours, I witnessed the choreographed operation to evacuate civilians and rebel fighters, while a similar operation got underway to bring out pro-Assad civilians surrounded by rebels in Idlib province to the southwest.
This was an exchange of lives arranged between Russia, Turkey and Iran, all of whom have a stake in this conflict. Why, though, has it taken so long to get to this point at the expense of so many ordinary Aleppans?
The operation was repeated several times as each enclave was emptied. It marked a watershed in Syria’s protracted civil war, handing President Assad a victory celebrated by crowds looking on. In government-controlled Aleppo there was little sympathy for rebel fighters who many characterize as “terrorists.”
But the inconvenient truth is that the people of Aleppo weren’t fighting each other. This started as a battle between a regime and those who dared to oppose its tyranny. In some places, the idealistic opposition didn’t last long. Liberal goals were soon overtaken by the philosophy of hard-line jihadists, who moved in to replace moderate rebels in some neighbourhoods, giving the government the perfect pretext to use any means it could to exterminate everyone who resisted.
President Assad has the victory he likens to an historical watershed, but the cost to this ancient city is astonishing. Entire neighbourhoods have been levelled. People are slowly returning to homes that are little more than charred shells.
Aleppo may have fallen to the government, but it’s now a shattered city, inhabited by a broken people.