An operation to evacuate injured civilians from besieged eastern Aleppo in Syria resumed on Thursday after a convoy came under deadly sniper fire, in violation of a tenuous ceasefire, activists said.
The International Committee of the Red Cross said it was working alongside the Syrian Red Crescent to bring around 200 wounded people out of rebel-controlled districts.
Earlier, one person was killed and four others injured when a truck carrying volunteer rescuers from the White Helmets group was shot at. It was attempting to clear a path for ambulances, according to Dr. Hamza al-Khateab, the manager of Aleppo’s al-Quds hospital. The ambulances also came under fire.
Latest developments
Convoy carrying injured civilians came under fire, leaving one dead and four injured
Evacuations were paused after the reports of attack but have since resumed
Attack came as new ceasefire was agreed overnight
Syrian regime continued bombardment Wednesday, breaking an earlier truce, UN said
UN human rights chief says resumed bombardment likely a war crime
White Helmets officer wounded
An operation to evacuate the injured from eastern Aleppo began tentatively on Thursday after previous attempts failed on Wednesday. A new ceasefire was agreed overnight after an earlier truce brokered by Turkey collapsed.
But the operation ground to a halt when a truck clearing a route for ambulances came under fire. Among those injured was Bebars Meshaal — chief officer of the White Helmets, also known as the self-styled Syrian Civil Defense — who lost his kidney in the attack, al-Khateab said.
“We went to al-Ramouseh and we were coordinating with the Russians. They said the road is clear, a truck entered to clear the road for the ambulances, fire (was) shot at the truck and the ambulances. I am in the hospital now and Bebars is in the operation room,” al-Khateab said.
The White Helmets and the Aleppo Media Center (AMC) activist group claim regime snipers were behind the attack.
CNN is unable to independently verify the details.
Meshaal is now in a stable condition, al-Khateab said.
The White Helmets confirmed on Twitter that a “volunteer” was “shot and injured by a regime sniper while clearing ambulance route in west Aleppo,” while the AMC also reported “direct fire by the Syrian regime” on the convoy.
The attack had brought the evacuations to a halt, but the International Committee of the Red Cross said in a tweet that they had resumed by the early afternoon, carrying 200 wounded people.
Russia’s military is also preparing to evacuate the remaining militants from east Aleppo, according to Russian state-run media. Sputnik, also state-run, is reporting that rebels evacuated will be taken to the neighboring province of Idlib, where rebel groups still have a foothold. The military is doing so under Russian President Vladimir Putin’s orders, Sputnik reported.
War crimes
UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein said that the continued bombardment of civilians on Wednesday, after the earlier truce had been agreed, likely constituted a war crime. The UN, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and several activists on the ground said regime airstrikes continued throughout the day.
“While the reasons for the breakdown in the ceasefire are disputed, the resumption of extremely heavy bombardment by the Syrian government forces and their allies on an area packed with civilians is almost certainly a violation of international law and most likely constitutes war crimes,” he said in a statement Wednesday.
The Syrian regime is on the brink of taking the whole city of Aleppo, having made sweeping gains in just over two weeks since its forces, backed by airstrikes, entered the enclave by ground.
If the regime does take control of the key city, it would mark a turning point in the brutal five-year civil war that has killed hundreds of thousands of people.
Rebel groups held eastern Aleppo for more than four years after the Arab Spring uprising, and a regime siege on the area had essentially cut it off from the outside world, sparking a humanitarian crisis there.
Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has vowed to take back the city and told Russia 24 on Wednesday that he intended to immediately carry on with military interventions in other parts of the country.
“There will be no pause, because this only happens in an area in which terrorists say that they are prepared to hand in their weapons or leave the area,” he said, according to a translation by the Syrian state-run news agency SANA.
“Only then, military operations stop. Operations do not stop during negotiations, because we do not trust the terrorists, because they often say something and do the opposite. They used to ask for ceasefires only to strengthen their positions and obtain supplies consisting of weapons, ammunition.”
‘Dead bodies everywhere’
In rebel-held areas, food and supplies are running out, a resident told CNN on Wednesday.
“People are living on the very last remaining sacks of baking flour they have. They are using wood from furniture they take from the house to use for cooking. There is no more cooking gas,” the resident said.
The resident also gave a harrowing account of the scene at a hospital in the rebel-held east.
“I thought I walked into a slaughterhouse. There were dead bodies everywhere,” the resident said.
“There were many, many, wounded people. The doctors are not able to cope with the load anymore. They ran out of plasma and other medical supplies.”
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