EVACUATIONS STALL as war rages in Aleppo
aleppo — Deadly clashes erupted in Syria’s Aleppo on Wednesday as a deal for the evacuation of rebel areas was put on hold, leaving thousands of cold and hungry civilians uncertain of their future.
Qatar announced that it will call off its National Day celebrations next week out of solidarity with the people Aleppo.
Aleppo families had gathered in the streets before dawn hoping to leave the ravaged city after an agreement announced the night before to evacuate civilians and rebels.
The first departures had been expected around 5am but there was no movement, and a few hours later, fierce fighting shook the city.
The landmark evacuation deal, brokered by Russia and Turkey, came after the army seized more than 90 per cent of east Aleppo from the rebels. It would have marked the end of opposition resistance in Syria’s second city after years of fighting and dealt the opposition their worst blow since the conflict began in March 2011. But it appeared increasingly fragile by Wednesday afternoon as the government and the rebels, as well as their foreign allies, traded accusations.
Iran, one of President Bashar Al Assad’s main backers in the battle, imposed new conditions, saying it wanted the simultaneous evacuation of wounded from two villages besieged by rebel fighters, according to rebel and UN sources.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said he would speak with Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin later in a bid to rescue the deal. “The situation on the ground is very fragile and complicated,” he said. —
aleppo — The planned evacuation of rebel districts of Aleppo stalled on Wednesday as air strikes and heavy shelling hit the city and Iran was said to have imposed new conditions on the deal.
Iran, one of Syrian President Bashar Al Assad’s main backers in the battle for Aleppo, wanted a simultaneous evacuation of wounded from the villages of Foua and Kefraya that are besieged by rebels, according to rebel and UN sources.
Rebel groups said that was just an excuse to hold up the evacuation, which a pro-opposition TV station said could now be delayed until Thursday.
A ceasefire brokered on Tuesday by Russia, Assad’s most powerful ally, and Turkey was intended to end years of fighting in the city, giving the Syrian leader his biggest victory in more than five years of war.
But air strikes, shelling and gunfire erupted on Wednesday morning and a monitoring group said the truce appeared to have collapsed. Syrian state television said rebel shelling of the Bustan Al Qasr district, recently recaptured by the army, had killed six people.
Russia said government forces were responding to rebel attacks. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said rebel resistance was likely to end in the next two or three days.
Officials in the military alliance fighting in support of Assad could not be reached immediately for comment on why the evacuation, expected to start in the early hours of Wednesday, had been delayed. Nobody had left by dawn, according to a Reuters witness waiting at the agreed departure point. Twenty buses waited with engines running but showed no sign of moving into rebel districts.
People in eastern Aleppo packed their bags and burned personal belongings, fearing looting by the Syrian army and its Iranian-backed militia allies. In what appeared to be a separate development from the planned evacuation, the Russian defence ministry said 6,000 civilians and 366 fighters had left rebel-held districts over the past 24 hours. The evacuation plan was the culmination of two weeks of rapid advances by the Syrian army and its allies that drove insurgents back into an ever-smaller pocket of the city.
Russia’s decision to deploy its air force to Syria 18 months ago turned the war in Assad’s favour after rebel advances across western Syria. In addition to Aleppo, he has won back insurgent strongholds near Damascus this year. The government and its allies have focused the bulk of their firepower on fighting rebels in western Syria rather than Daesh, which this week managed to take back the ancient city of Palmyra, once again illustrating the challenge Assad faces reestablishing control over all Syria.
The once-flourishing economic centre with its renowned ancient sites has been pulverised during the war, which has killed hundreds of thousands of people, created the world’s worst refugee crisis and allowed the rise of Daesh. As the battle for Aleppo unfolded, global concern has risen over the plight of the 250,000 civilians who were thought to remain in its rebel-held eastern sector before the sudden army advance began at the end of November.
Tens of thousands of them fled to parts of the city held by the government or by a Kurdish militia, and tens of thousands more retreated further into the rebel enclave as it rapidly shrank under the army’s lightning advance.
The rout of rebels in Aleppo sparked a mass flight of terrified civilians and insurgents in bitter weather, a crisis the United Nations said was a “complete meltdown of humanity”. There were food and water shortages in rebel areas, with all hospitals closed.
On Tuesday, the United Nations voiced deep concern about reports it had received of Syrian soldiers and allied Iraqi fighters summarily shooting dead 82 people in recaptured east Aleppo districts. It accused them of “slaughter”.
“The reports we had are of people being shot in the street trying to flee and shot in their homes,” said Rupert Colville, a UN spokesman.—