Aleppo evacuation halted as blasts heard

Aleppo, December 16

The evacuation of people from eastern Aleppo was suspended on Friday and a Reuters witness heard at least four blasts at a location where buses had been departing.

A state-run Syrian TV station reported that rebels had breached an agreement with the government by trying to take prisoners with them during the evacuation.

A Syrian official overseeing the evacuation told Reuters it had been obstructed due to "obstructions".

The International Committee of the Red Cross said late on Thursday that some 3,000 civilians and more than 40 wounded people, including children, had already been evacuated.

ICRC official Robert Mardini told Reuters there were no clear plans yet for how to ship out rebel fighters, who will be allowed under the ceasefire to leave for other areas outside government control.

Women cried out in celebration as the first buses passed through a government-held area, and some waved the Syrian flag.

Assad said in a video statement the taking of Aleppo — his biggest prize in more than five years of civil war — was a historic moment.

An elderly woman, who had gathered with others in a government area to watch the convoy removing the rebels, raised her hands to the sky, saying: "God save us from this crisis, and from the (militants). They brought us only destruction". Wissam Zarqa, an English teacher in the rebel zone, said most people were happy to be leaving safely. But he said: "Some of them are angry they are leaving their city. I saw some of them crying. This is almost my feeling in a way". Earlier, ambulances trying to evacuate people came under fire from fighters loyal to the Syrian government, who injured three people, a rescue service spokesman said.

"Thousands of people are in need of evacuation, but the first and most urgent thing is wounded, sick and children, including orphans," said Jan Egeland, the UN humanitarian adviser for Syria.

Staffan de Mistura, the UN special envoy for Syria, said about 50,000 people remained in rebel-held Aleppo, of whom about 10,000 would be evacuated to nearby Idlib province and the rest would move to government-held city districts.

Behind those fleeing was a wasteland of flattened buildings, concrete rubble and bullet-pocked walls, where tens of thousands had lived until recent days under intense bombardment even after medical and rescue services had collapsed.

The once-flourishing economic centre with its renowned ancient sites has been pulverised during the war that has killed more than 300,000 people, created the world's worst refugee crisis and allowed for the rise of Islamic State. 

Turkey offers assistance

Turkish officials said Turkey would set up a camp in Syria to host people evacuated from the city of Aleppo but will continue to take in the sick and wounded to its own hospitals.

Two potential sites, around 3.5 km (2.2 miles) inside Syria, have been identified for a camp with the capacity to host up to 80,000 people, two senior officials told Reuters.

"Work on the infrastructure for the camp will begin shortly," a separate official from Turkish aid organisation IHH said by phone from inside Syria. The camp will be jointly set up by the Turkish Red Crescent, disaster agency AFAD and IHH.

The IHH official said evacuees had so far largely found shelter with relatives in and around Syria's Idlib province, southwest of Aleppo, but that work to identify those with nowhere to go was underway.

Turkey has taken in 55 wounded and sick evacuees, according to Hasan Aydinlik, head of an emergency response division of Turkey's health ministry. He told reporters at the Cilvegozu border crossing that one of the wounded had died in hospital while three including a young child were in serious condition.

Turkey is already sheltering around 2.7 million Syrian refugees. Officials said Ankara was working to increase the number of buses used for the evacuation to speed up the process.

An aid official with Syrian NGO Shafak, working inside Syria on the Aleppo evacuation, said he expected more people to come towards the Turkish border on Friday as the villages in the countryside west of Aleppo were full.

'Place them all in Idlib'

The United States was forced to watch from the sidelines as the Syrian government and its allies, including Russia, mounted an assault to pin down the rebels in an ever-diminishing pocket of territory, culminating in this week's ceasefire.

US Secretary of State John Kerry said on Thursday that the Syrian government was carrying out "nothing short of a massacre" in Aleppo. UN aid chief Stephen O'Brien will brief the Security Council on Friday on the Aleppo evacuation.

The Syrian White Helmets civil defense group and other rights organisations accused Russia of committing or being complicit in war crimes in Syria, saying Russian air strikes in the Aleppo region had killed 1,207 civilians, including 380 children.

In a letter submitted to the UN Commission of Inquiry on Syria and seen by Reuters on Thursday, the groups listed 304 alleged attacks carried out in the Aleppo area primarily between July and December and said there was a "high likelihood" of Russia responsibility.

The Russian UN mission was not immediately available to comment on the allegations. Russia has said it stopped air strikes in Aleppo in mid-October.

In Aleppo's rebel-held area, columns of black smoke could be seen as residents hoping to depart burned personal belongings they do not want to leave for government forces to loot.

A senior Russian general, Viktor Poznikhir, said the Syrian army had almost finished its operations in Aleppo.

But the war will still be far from over, with insurgents retaining their rural stronghold of Idlib province southwest of Aleppo, and the jihadist Islamic State group holding swathes of the east and recapturing Palmyra this week.

Rebels and their families would be taken towards Idlib, a city in northwestern Syria that is outside government control, the Russian Defence Ministry said.

Idlib province, mostly controlled by hardline Islamist groups, is not a popular destination for fighters and civilians from east Aleppo, where nationalist rebel groups predominated.

A senior European diplomat said last week the fighters had a choice between surviving for a few weeks in Idlib or dying in Aleppo. "For the Russians, it's simple. Place them all in Idlib and then they have all their rotten eggs in one basket." Idlib is already a target for Syrian and Russian air strikes but it is unclear if the government will push for a ground assault or simply seek to contain rebels there for now.

The International Rescue Committee said: "Escaping Aleppo doesn't mean escaping the war ... After witnessing the ferocity of attacks on civilians in Aleppo, we are very concerned that the sieges and barrel bombs will follow the thousands who arrive in Idlib". 

Shi'ite villages

The evacuation deal was expected to include the safe passage of wounded from the Shi'ite villages of Foua and Kefraya near Idlib that are besieged by rebels. A convoy set off to evacuate the villages on Thursday, Syrian state media said.

Efforts to evacuate eastern Aleppo began earlier in the week with a truce brokered by Russia, Assad's most powerful ally, and Turkey, which has backed the opposition. That agreement broke down following renewed fighting on Wednesday and the evacuation did not take place then as planned.

A rebel official said a new truce came into effect early on Thursday. Shortly before the new deal was announced, clashes raged in Aleppo.

Government forces made a new advance in Sukkari — one of a handful of districts still held by rebels — and brought half of the neighbourhood under their control, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a monitoring group.

The Russian Defence Ministry said — before the report of the government forces' advance in Sukkari — that the rebels controlled an enclave of only 2.5 square km (1 square mile).

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 under intense air strikes and artillery fire.

By taking control of Aleppo, Assad has proved the power of his military coalition, aided by Russia's air force and an array of Shi'ite militias from across the region.

Rebels have been backed by the United States, Turkey and Gulf monarchies, but that support has fallen far short of the direct military assistance given to Assad by Russia and Iran.

Russia's decision to deploy its air force to Syria more than a year 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. — Reuters