Sick, injured begin to leave eastern Ghouta

BEIRUT: Sick and injured civilians left a rebel enclave in Syria’s eastern Ghouta yesterday under the first medical evacuation since a massive assault began nearly a month ago.

Women carrying infants, men hobbling on crutches and an old man in a wheelchair waited at a school nearby, along with dozens who exited through the al-Wafideen crossing, a witness said.

More than 1 100 civilians died in the last big rebel bastion near the capital, the UN office of humanitarian affairs says.

Syrian government forces have captured swathes of eastern Ghouta, a pocket of satellite towns and farmland, splintering it into three separate zones in recent days.

Yasser Delwan, a political official with the Jaish al-Islam rebel faction, said the patients who left Douma were the first of several batches.

The evacuees come from a list of nearly 1 000 people which UN officials have said need emergency treatment outside, he added. Jaish al-Islam said on Monday it had reached a medical evacuation deal with the Syrian government’s key ally, Russia, after indirect talks.

For months, the UN has pleaded with authorities to allow the evacuation of hundreds of patients, including children with cancer. The Ghouta enclave is home to nearly 400 000 people, under army siege since 2013 without enough food, water or medicine, it says. The government assault on eastern Ghouta has become one of the bloodiest offensives of the war, and is on course to deal rebels their biggest defeat since the battle of Aleppo in 2016.

Russia has offered rebels safe passage out if they surrender the territory, echoing deals that saw Damascus take control of major cities across western Syria.

The two main Ghouta factions have vowed to stay and fight, and have denied government allegations that they have blocked residents from leaving.

Hamza Birqdar, Jaish al-Islam’s military spokesperson, said online the fighters would continue to defend their territory until the end.

With the Ghouta now split into different parts, Delwan said his rebel faction was in charge only of evacuations from Douma, and not from other towns. If the deal proceeds, hundreds “will all be evacuated in batches, some in Damascus and some outside of Syria”. State media said others followed the first group which included about 35 people, off to a shelter on the outskirts of the capital Damascus.

State TV accompanied some of the evacuees and broadcast interviews in which they said insurgents had prevented them from leaving. “We weren’t able to come out,” one man said. “They are not allowing anyone at all, they attack them and sent them back.”

Moscow and Damascus say their forces only target armed militants and seek to stop mortar salvoes by Islamist insurgents that killed dozens of people in the capital. They accuse the rebels of using civilians as shields, which the fighters deny.

Troops pressed on with the assault yesterday and took farmland around Jisreen, said a military media unit run by Iran-backed Lebanese Shia group Hezbollah, which fights alongside the Syrian army. – Reuters