Medical evacuations fail to materialize despite lull

BEIRUT — A ceasefire to allow wounded civilians and rebels to leave besieged parts of Aleppo has been extended into the weekend by Russia, but hoped-for medical evacuations didn’t materialize by Friday evening because of a lack of security guarantees, officials and residents said.

The dawn-to-dusk “humanitarian pause” that began Thursday will last into Saturday on the orders of President Vladimir Putin, said Lt. Gen. Sergei Rudskoi, speaking in Moscow. It had been due to expire Friday.

The lull had been greeted with high hopes by U.N. officials, and the Syrian government opened a new corridor for those wanting to flee the neighborhoods shattered by weeks of Russian and Syrian air strikes.

But by Friday evening, no evacuations were seen along the corridor, reflecting the intractable nature of Syria’s civil war, now in its sixth year.

Jens Laerke, a spokesman for the United Nations’ humanitarian aid agency, described an “astronomically difficult situation,” although he declined to specify who was responsible for the breakdown.

He told reporters in Geneva that the evacuations couldn’t begin “because the necessary conditions were not in place to ensure safe, secure and voluntary” movement of people.

A U.N. official said Syrian opposition fighters were blocking the evacuations because the Syrian government and Russia were not holding up their end of the deal and were impeding deliveries of medical and humanitarian supplies into Aleppo.

The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity pending release of an official statement, said intensive efforts were under way in Damascus, Aleppo, Geneva and Gaziantep, Turkey, to try to move forward on the evacuations.

In Moscow, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said al Qaedalinked militants in Aleppo were refusing to leave the city along the corridors created by the Russians and Syrian forces “despite the gestures of goodwill from Moscow and Damascus.”

Militants from the al Qaeda affiliate formerly known as the Al-Nusra Front are believed to make up a minority of the several thousand fighters in the besieged district.

Rudskoi, of the Russian Defense Ministry, accused militants of firing at humanitarian corridors and using the break to prepare for an offensive.

Residents of eastern Aleppo have said many won’t use the corridors because there are no guarantees they won’t be arrested by government forces.

Karam Al-masri / AFP / Getty Images Opposition fighters from an alliance of Islamist rebel groups look at a flyer reportedly distributed by the government encouraging people to leave a rebel-held area in the northern embattled city of Aleppo.