UN urges evacuation of civilians in Syria’s Eastern Ghouta

SOME 400 civilians are in urgent need of medical evacuation from Syria’s Eastern Ghouta region, including 29 who will die if they are not allowed to leave immediately, the United Nations warned yesterday, as reported by AFP. “Around 400 men, women, children... need to be evacuated now,” Jan Egeland, head of the U.N.’s humanitarian taskforce for Syria, told reporters in Geneva, adding that 29 of them, including 18 children “will die if they are not evacuated.” The four-year siege on Eastern Ghouta has led to the deaths of as many as 397 civilians, including 206 children and 67 women, due to a lack of food and medical supplies, Anadolu Agency (AA) reported. Meanwhile, the Syrian army and its allies have taken Albu Kamal, Daesh’s last major stronghold in Syria, representing the end of Daesh’s project in the region, the army general command said yesterday. The army said it is now fighting the last remaining Daesh pockets in the country’s eastern desert, an army statement said. “The liberation of Albu Kamal city is very important because it signals the general fall of the terrorist Daesh organization’s project in the region,” a statement from the general command said, according to Reuters. Alongside Lebanon’s Hezbollah and other Shi’ite militias, and backed by Iran and Russia, the Syrian army has recently seized swathes of land from Daesh. Albu Kamal, on the Euphrates River, is located in Syria’s eastern Deir ez-Zor province on the Iraqi border.