Thousands evacuated from Aleppo after deal over besieged villages
BEIRUT (Reuters) - Thousands of people were evacuated from the last rebel-held enclave of Aleppo yesterday in return for insurgents allowing people to leave two besieged pro-government villages in nearby Idlib province.
In bitter winter weather, convoys of buses from eastern Aleppo reached rebel-held areas to the west of the city. More buses left the Shi’ite Muslim villages of al-Foua and Kefraya for government lines, according to a UN official and the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a monitoring group.
The foreign and defence ministers of Russia and Iran, President Bashar al-Assad’s main supporters, and Turkey, which backs some large rebel groups, will meet in Moscow today.
The talks, aimed at giving fresh impetus for a solution in Aleppo, will go ahead despite the killing of Russia’s ambassador to Ankara by a gunman yesterday.
The United Nations Security Council agreed a resolution calling for UN officials and others to monitor evacuations from east Aleppo and the safety of civilians still there.
The Syrian ambassador to the United Nations, Bashar Ja’afari, denounced the resolution as propaganda, saying the last of the rebels were leaving and Aleppo would be “clean” by last evening.
UN Syria mediator Staffan de Mistura intends to convene peace talks in Geneva on Feb 8, his office said. The recapture of Aleppo is Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s biggest victory so far in the nearly six-year-old war, but the fighting is not over. Large parts of the country are still controlled by insurgent and Islamist groups.
Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said 20,000 civilians had been evacuated from Aleppo so far, but there were wide variations in estimates of how many people still sought to be taken out, from a few thousand up to tens of thousands.
“Thousands of people still want to be evacuated,” ICRC spokesman Krista Armstrong said ofAleppo.
An estimated total of 17,000 people have been evacuated from the enclave since Thursday, including 7,000 on Monday, she said.
“There are still 40 buses inside the enclave of east Aleppo with more people who are proceeding with evacuation. The operation is still ongoing,” she said.
Senior rebel official Zakaria Malahifji of the Aleppo-based Fastaqim group said “the process is supposed to continue” throughout the night.
Nearly 50 children, some critically injured, were rescued from eastern Aleppo, where they had been trapped in an orphanage, the United Nations said.
The evacuation of civilians from the two villages had been demanded by the Syrian army and its allies before they would allow fighters and civilians trapped in Aleppo to depart. The stand-off halted the Aleppo evacuation over the weekend.
“Complex evacuations from East Aleppo and Foua and Kef raya now in full swing. More than 900 buses needed to evacuate all. We must not fail,” Jan Egeland, who chairs the United Nations aid task force in Syria, tweeted.