Hundreds left in need of evacuation

BEIRUT — More than 400 patients on a UN list waiting for evacuations from a siege in Syria were left behind on Friday as the Red Cross said it had finished transferring just 29 people and their families to Damascus for medical care.

It took the International Committee of the Red Cross and the Syrian Arab Red Crescent three days to evacuate the patients and their family members from the eastern Ghouta suburbs of Damascus to hospitals just minutes away, underscoring the degree to which authorities have obstructed basic relief work in the war- torn country.

The UN submitted a list of names to the government six months ago of patients requiring evacuation from the government’s siege of the suburbs of its own capital because they were suffering from war wounds, kidney failure, and malnutrition. In November, UN humanitarian adviser Jan Egeland said the list had reached 494 names, and 12 patients had died waiting for care. The UN’s children’s agency said more than 100 children require evacuation.

The government, which has besieged the eastern Ghouta suburbs with varying degrees of severity since 2013 in response to a revolt against President Bashar Assad’s rule, refused to allow any evacuations until this week. UN officials have blasted the use of sieges against civilians in Syria as “medieval” and “barbaric.” Amnesty International called the tactic a crime against humanity.

It is not clear if the 29 patients evacuated were on the UN list.

The Army of Islam, a prominent rebel faction in eastern Ghouta, said it had agreed to release an equivalent number of prisoners of war and other captives to the government in exchange for securing the medical evacuations.

The last of the 29 evacuations came as rebels attacked a government position at the town of Harasta, along the eastern Ghouta front, and the government resumed its stepped up bombardment of the suburbs.

Syria’s nearly seven- year civil war has killed some 400,000 people and created the worst refugee crisis since the Second World War, with some five million Syrians having fled the country.

HAMZA AL- AJWEH/ GETTY IMAGES Members of the Syrian Arab Red Crescent tend to Syrian girls in an ambulance in Douma on the third night of evacuations from the besieged rebel enclave of eastern Ghouta, on the outskirts of the Damascus.