UN will deploy monitors as evacuation resumes
France says that observers must be sent in to halt massacres by Aleppo militias
THE UN Security Council has approved the deployment of UN monitors to Aleppo as the evacuation of fighters and civilians from the last remaining opposition stronghold in the northern city resumed after days of delays.
France said monitors were needed to prevent “mass atrocities” being committed by Syrian government forces, especially militias.
However, thousands of people have already been evacuated and the operation will likely be over before the observers arrive.
Another evacuation is under way in two rebel-besieged Shia villages, where the sick and wounded were being allowed out until gunmen torched several buses being used for the operation on Sunday. That evacuation has since resumed.
The resolution also adopted calls for the UN to monitor evacuations from eastern Aleppo and demands that UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon should urgently consult Syria and other parties on the immediate deployment of the monitors.
France and Russia, who submitted rival draft resolutions, announced the agreement on a text after more than three hours of closed-door talks on Sunday.
The resolution also demands that all parties allow unconditional and immediate access for the UN and its partners to deliver humanitarian aid and medical care, and “respect and protect all civilians across Aleppo and throughout Syria”.
The evacuation of Aleppo began last week after Turkey and Russia brokered a ceasefire as government forces were closing in on the rebels’ last redoubt in Syria’s largest city, but has been repeatedly delayed.
The evacuation of more than 2,000 sick and wounded from the besieged Shia villages of Foua and Kfarya was tacked on to the deal at the last minute.
The UK-based Syrian Observatory For Human Rights and the pan-Arab Al-Mayadeen TV said 10 buses left with civilians yesterday.
There are also plans to evacuate hundreds of people from Madaya and Zabadani, two besieged, rebel-held villages near the Lebanese border. The Observatory and Mayadeen said 15 buses had entered the two villages yesterday.
Rebel-held eastern Aleppo has been besieged for months, with several previous ceasefires breaking down and virtually no humanitarian aid reaching its residents.
One who left Aleppo yesterday was Mohammed Abu Jaafar, who described a miserable three-mile trip that took more than two hours in an overcrowded state bus.
He said they passed three checkpoints, one manned by Russian troops, another by plainclothes Syrian intelligence agents and the third by Syrian troops. Inside the bus, men, women and children were hungry and cold as they waited for hours in freezing temperatures, he said.
“Children were screaming, and some people fainted,” he said, adding that there was no baby formula or nappies.
Among those evacuated yesterday was seven-year-old Bana Alabed and her mother Fatemah, who tweeted the horrors of living through the government’s assault on eastern Aleppo, which destroyed much of the city. Their account had some 326,000 followers. Speaking to the Qasioun News Agency, she said she was glad to have finally reached safety but expressed regret that she was forced out of her home city and said she did not want to be a refugee. “I left my soul there,” she said.
The Observatory and Turkey’s Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu later said that since midnight on Sunday, 4,500 people have been evacuated from eastern Aleppo.
It is estimated that there are 15,000 civilians and 6,000 fighters still there.