Thousands evacuated from Aleppo as UN eyes observers

Wounded Syrians lying on the floor of the last functioning hospital as people wait to be evacuated on December 18, 2016 in the last rebel-held pocket of Syria’s Aleppo. More than 1,000 people were evaShow more

ALEPPO // More than 3,000 people left the rebel enclave of Aleppo on Monday, raising hope for many others still stranded, as Russia eased its objections to sending UN observers to oversee the evacuations.

A convoy of around 20 buses crossed the front line in the early morning headed for rebel-held territory elsewhere in northern Syria, after around 350 people got out during the night.

They were the first departures since Friday when the government suspended evacuations insisting that those trapped in two northwestern villages under rebel siege should also be allowed to leave.

A medic said the latest evacuees were in a “terrible state” after their departure was delayed for hours in temperatures well below freezing, compounding their plight from months of siege and bombardment by the army.

The new evacuations from the devastated enclave came as a monitoring group said rebels had finally allowed convoys out of two villages they have besieged since spring last year.

Around 500 people left in a dawn convoy out of Fuaa and Kafraya, said the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based monitoring group.

Government demands for evacuations from the two Shiite-majority villages had put the whole process on hold for days, and on Sunday rebels attacked buses sent to bring people out, killing one of the drivers.

Around 350 people in five buses made it out of Aleppo during the night after Russia and Turkey urged the Syrian regime to allow a convoy of buses to pass its final control point, the Observatory said.

It was regime ally Moscow and rebel supporter Ankara that brokered a first evacuation deal last week to end a blistering month-long government assault on what used to be a rebel bastion in east Aleppo.

“Five buses carrying the evacuees arrived from besieged parts of east Aleppo,” said Ahmad Al Dbis, who heads a team of doctors and volunteers coordinating evacuations.

“They were in a terrible state,” he said.

“They hadn’t eaten, they had nothing to drink, the children had caught colds, they were not even able to go to the toilet.”

Mr Dbis said he saw families wrapped in several layers of coats getting off the buses.

One young boy was biting into an apple while aid workers distributed packs of bottled water to his family.

Evacuations were suspended on Friday, a day after convoys of people had begun leaving the rebel sector under a deal allowing the regime to take full control of the battleground city.

The main obstacle to a resumption had been the dispute over how many people would be evacuated in parallel from the two Shiite villages.

A rebel representative said that hundreds of people would also be evacuated from Zabadani and Madaya, two rebel towns near the Lebanese border under siege by the army, as part of the deal.

Iran’s official news agency IRNA said the foreign ministers of Russia, Turkey and Iran would meet in Moscow on Tuesday to discuss the situation.

Moscow, which has carried out an air war in support of the Damascus regime since September last year, had threatened to veto a draft of the resolution calling for monitors to oversee the protection of civilians.

But after four hours of closed-door consultations on Sunday it gave the French-drafted text its guarded support.

US ambassador Samantha Power anticipated member states would vote “unanimously”.

Families have been sheltering at night in freezing temperatures in bombed out apartment blocks in Aleppo’s Al Amiriyah district, the departure point for evacuations.

At a hospital in the rebel sector, patients lay on floors without food or water and almost no heating.

Aleppo has seen some of the worst violence of the nearly six-year war that has killed more than 310,000 people.

* Agence France-Presse