Aleppo evacuations halted
New delay comes after buses to fetch residents attacked
BUSES began entering the last rebel-held parts of Aleppo yesterday to resume the evacuation of thousands of increasingly desperate Syrian civilians and rebels trapped in the besieged enclave.
However, the evacuations were again postponed until further notice after gunmen attacked the buses sent to also evacuate people from the villages of Fuaa and Kafraya and in the absence of security guarantees for the evacuees, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.
One of the bus drivers was killed in the incident, the monitor said.
Yasser al-Youssef, of the Nureddin al-Zinki rebel group, confirmed that the evacuations had been suspended.
The Observatory said buses would not leave the rebel areas of Aleppo until residents of Fuaa and Kafraya were also able to leave
As international alarm grew over the plight of the residents – including women, children, the sick and wounded – the UN Security Council was to vote on whether to send observers to the battleground city.
The evacuations from Aleppo had been suspended on Friday, a day after thousands of people had begun leaving the rebel sector under a deal allowing the regime to take full control of Aleppo.
Buses started entering several neighbourhoods yesterday under the supervision of the Red Crescent and the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) “to bring the remaining terrorists and their families out”, state news agency Sana said, referring to the rebels.
However, the expected evacuations were suspended after the attacks on the vehicles.
The main obstacle to a resumption had been a disagreement over the number of people to be evacuated in parallel from the two Shi’ite villages of Fuaa and Kafraya, under rebel siege in northwestern Syria.
A rebel representative had said earlier yesterday that a new agreement had been reached under which evacuations would take place in two phases from Aleppo, Fuaa and Kafraya as well as Zabadani and Madaya, two rebel towns besieged by the regime in Damascus province.
The UN Security Council was set to meet in New York yesterday to vote on French proposals to dispatch monitors to oversee evacuations and report on the protection of civilians.
The draft text said the council was alarmed by the worsening humanitarian crisis in Aleppo and by the fact that tens of thousands of besieged Aleppo inhabitants were in need of aid and evacuation.
But the proposals face resistance from veto-wielding Russia, a key backer of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.
Families have been sheltering at night in freezing temperatures in bombed-out apartment blocks in Aleppo's Al-Amiriyah district, the departure point for evacuations before they were halted.
A correspondent who visited a hospital in the rebel sector saw appalling conditions, with patients lying on the floor without food or water and almost no heating.
Abu Omar, who has waited outside in the cold for days to be evacuated, said: “There’s no more food or drinking water, and the situation is getting worse by the day.”
Dozens of trucks with humanitarian aid crossed the Turkish border into Syria on Saturday, piling supplies in a buffer zone.
Aleppo has seen some of the worst violence of the nearly six-year war that has killed more than 310 000 people.
UN envoy Staffan de Mistura estimated that as of Thursday around 40 000 civilians and perhaps as many as 5 000 opposition fighters remained in Aleppo’s rebel enclave.