BEIRUT // The Syrian government suspended the evacuation of the last rebel-held districts of eastern Aleppo on Friday amid conflicting claims over violations of terms and the numbers of people still trapped there.
The evacuation began on Thursday afternoon after a few false starts and continued overnight. Before they were halted on Friday morning, Damascus’s chief ally Russia said that more than 9,500 people, including 4,500 opposition fighters, had been taken in convoys headed to rebel territory outside the city.
The convoys stopped after rebels and the Syrian government accused each other of violating the evacuation agreement. The rebels claimed that evacuees leaving Aleppo were being stopped and detained by pro-government militias. The government and its allies in turn accused the rebels of violating the ceasefire, blocking reciprocal evacuations from two rebel-besieged Shiite towns that were part of the deal, and attempting to take prisoners and heavy weapons with them out of eastern Aleppo. Buses, ambulances and cars soon stopped ferrying civilians and fighters out of eastern Aleppo.
Al Manar, the television station of the Lebanese Shiite movement Hizbollah which is fighting on the Syrian government’s side, reported that rebels had shelled the evacuation route for residents leaving the besieged Shiite towns of Foua and Kefraya in Idlib, violating the ceasefire. The station and other pro-Damascus outlets also said rebels leaving Aleppo had attempted to bring prisoners with them in violation of the deal.
A rebel source told Reuters that all opposition groups besieging the two towns had agreed to their evacuation save for Jabhat Fatah Al Sham, the hardline group that was formerly Al Qaeda’s branch in Syria. Later in the day, the news agency was told that Jabhat Fatah Al Sham had agreed to participate in the deal, raising hopes that the evacuations could be salvaged.
Meanwhile, rebels claimed that pro-government forces had halted and detained convoys of evacuees and moved to block the escape from eastern Aleppo. One convoy of between 800 and 1,000 fighters and civilians was forced to stop at a militia checkpoint in government territory where several people were killed before the convoy was turned back, according to accounts from rebels, residents, activists and local journalists.
Reports said gunfire and explosions could be heard again in the city after a rare calm, as the evacuation deal fell apart again.
“Aleppo is now a synonym for hell,” the United Nations secretary general Ban Ki-moon said as he appealed for the evacuations to resume in his final press conference before leaving office.
As the convoys halted amid resumed fighting, Russia, whose troops were escorting the convoys out of Aleppo said the evacuation was finished, not just stalled.
“The operation of the Russian Reconciliation Centre on the withdrawal of militants and their family members from eastern areas of Aleppo has been completed. All women and children staying in the quarters controlled by the militants have been evacuated,” Russia’s defence ministry said. “The Syrian army’s operation to retake quarters of eastern Aleppo from militants has been completed. Government troops are eliminating the few remaining pockets of resistance.”
The announcement raised fears for the safety of up to 40,000 civilians that the UN says were trapped in the rebel enclave before the evacuation deal. By Russia’s count, about 4,500 fighters and 5,000 civilians have been taken out of the city. If the UN and Syrian activists are correct, there are tens of thousands of civilians unaccounted for in Russia’s tally – civilians who are now facing an imminent assault by government forces.
Despite Russia’s claim, the Syrian government seemed to characterise Friday’s event as a suspension and interruption, not a completion of the evacuation. Turkey, which initially hashed out the evacuation deal with Moscow, maintained that the operation was still under way and that civilians remained trapped in eastern Aleppo.
Residents of the former rebel stronghold are desperate to leave after three months of siege and more than a month of intense regime bombardment that has killed hundreds of civilians.
Both rebels and civilians were relieved when a deal for them to leave the city was reached on Tuesday night, only to see it scuttled by violence and additional demands before it could begin. As they prepared to leave on Wednesday, the few remaining square kilometres of rebel territory in the city were again pounded with air and artillery strikes. On Thursday, they were again told an evacuation would take place, only to see it delayed after ambulances were fired upon as they tried to leave the rebel enclave.
The deal was finally put into action on Thursday afternoon, with mobs of people trying to get a spot on the green buses that entered their neighbourhood plastered with the portrait of Syrian president Bashar Al Assad. It was one last humiliation from a man hated or at least feared by many of those left in the rebel areas, but at least they would escape Aleppo’s ruins with their lives.
Earlier on Friday, Russia’s Tass news agency reported that president Vladimir Putin and Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan had agreed to invite Syria’s government and rebels to peace talks in Kazakhstan. Despite consistently dismissing earlier calls for a countrywide ceasefire as only beneficial to the rebels, Russia on Friday said such a truce was the “next stage” after the recapture of Aleppo.
Russia’s claims that all women and children had left eastern Aleppo’s rebel areas were refuted on Friday afternoon by civilians still trapped there.
The Twitter feed of 7-year-old Bana Alabed, who has been called the Anne Frank of Aleppo, posted a message attributed to her mother saying they were stuck in eastern Aleppo.
“Share this message to the whole world. #Aleppo ceasefire broke, civilians are in danger. I beg world u do something now to get us out,” it said.
Syrian activist Lina Shamy also posted on Twitter to say that she remained stuck in eastern Aleppo.
“Thousands of civilians & a lot of injured still in the besieged districts I confirm, thousands of civilians still here,” she wrote.
jwood@thenational.ae
* with additional reporting from Reuters and Agence France-Presse