Evacuations of thousands of civilians and rebels from Syria’s eastern Aleppo and in the towns of Kefraya and al-Foua have been postponed Sunday, according to the director of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, Rami Abdulrahman.
The exodus of people from the besieged areas was set to begin under a new complex people-swap deal, but the plan broke down after a number of buses were set on fire.
Syrian state media and the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a UK-based monitoring group, said that buses in Aleppo’s neighboring province of Idlib were set ablaze as they made their way to rebel-besieged Kefraya and Foua to evacuate people from there.
No evacuations had taken place by early evening, as desperation grew for thousands of people in eastern Aleppo. Many were sleeping on the streets and in bombed-out buildings in subfreezing temperatures since Friday, when earlier evacuations were brought to a sudden halt.
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Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Russian President Vladimir Putin talk about Aleppo in phone call.
No evacuations had taken place Sunday by early evening.
Buses set to evacuate people from rebel-besieged towns were set ablaze.
New deal mediated by Turkey after two ceasefires crumbled.
9,000 people evacuated before operations were suspended Friday.
Rebels say Iranian militia groups brought earlier evacuations to a halt.
Syrian regime is on the brink of seizing the whole city of Aleppo.
‘Reckless armed men’
The agreement, struck Saturday, was to give safe passage to those loyal to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s regime, including Iranian militia groups, from areas held or besieged by rebels, the Aleppo Media Center activist group said.
It was a new demand in exchange for the evacuation of civilians, rebels and others loyal to the opposition from eastern Aleppo, now almost entirely in government control.
Activist Monther Etaky in eastern Aleppo posted a video on Twitter showing dozens of weary and injured people, saying they had been waiting to be evacuated since 6 a.m. “Civilians are not negotiations tool(s),” he wrote in his post.
What began as a straightforward evacuation agreement has become a complicated, three-stage deal involving Aleppo and four other cities
Some 4,000 people were to be evacuated from Kefraya and Foua, while others were also to come from Madaya and Zabadani.
UN humanitarian adviser Jan Egeland lambasted those who set the buses ablaze.
“Reckless armed men burning buses for Foua and Kefraya undermine evacuation and relief for all civilians in besieged areas in Syria,” he said in a Twitter post.
Some resistance to the deal was expected. It requires the cooperation of opposing parties in the Syrian civil war that has raged for more than five years.
Winter will be ‘a killer’
The Norwegian Refugee Council is assisting people who have fled eastern Aleppo, many of whom slept outdoors as temperatures plunged below zero. The council is hosting them in camps to the north of the city.
“Our major concern at this point is — not only in Aleppo but across the country, where there are people being displaced by this fighting — is that they’re living in the open, they’re exposed to the elements,” Thomas White, the organization’s Syria Response Director, told CNN’s Cyril Vanier. “And it’s cold right now, and this winter in northern Syria will be a killer.”
Rebels blame Iranian militias
But for many, being taken to Idlib is moving from one war zone to another — Idlib is widely expected to be the regime’s next target, and the evacuations are in effect moving the rebels to one containable zone.
As many as 9,000 people had been evacuated from Aleppo’s besieged east in nine convoys on Thursday and Friday, but the evacuation came to a sudden halt Friday.
The Syrian state news agency SANA has said the evacuations were suspended after some evacuees were found to be transporting weapons and advanced communication devices.
But rebels claimed that Iranian and other Shia militia groups loyal to Assad had made fresh demands to have regime loyalists freed from other rebel-held areas.
“We would like to highlight that the Iranians are the main reason for delays and obstacles,” said Osama Abazid from the Free Syrian Army rebel alliance.
“We call upon you to spare no effort to ensure that attacks on convoys are prevented at all costs.”
‘All my children are gone’
And for those staying, life is only getting more grim, as the government’s grip on eastern Aleppo is now so tight, there is little left for civilians.
The Syrian regime was accused of continuing its destructive airstrikes this week in violation of the earlier ceasefires agreed.
A harrowing video broadcast by ITV’s Channel 4 of what is believed to be eastern Aleppo’s last hospital shows a child siting on a bed, covered in dust and blood, visibly traumatized, following an airstrike.
A woman, also bloodied and white with dust, wails in pain, saying she lost all her children in a strike in their home as they slept, .
“I don’t know what he (Assad) hit us with. We were at home sleeping. Suddenly, the whole building just fell on us. Oh my god! All my children are gone,” she said.
A boy, who appears in the video to be a young teenager, is in tears and shock as he cradles the body of his 1-month old brother, who suffocated in a strike. Two children are escorted around the hospital to look for their parents, hoping they are not the latest to be orphaned.
The UN Security Council was scheduled to meet Sunday to vote on a proposal brought by France that would redeploy UN staff to Aleppo to monitor and report on the evacuation of civilians.
But the Security Council has come under criticism, having failed to find a political solution to Syria’s brutal war that has killed at least 400,000 people and to even agree on days-long ceasefires.
Russia, which has supported Assad with airstrikes since September 2015, has used its veto power as a permanent member of the Security Council six times to shoot down UN resolutions on the conflict, while China has vetoed five of those six.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan spoke by phone with Russian President Vladimir Putin about the latest developments in Aleppo, according to Turkey’s official news agency Anadolu.
The two underlined the fragile situation regarding the evacuations. They said issues around evacuations should be solved as soon as possible. They also discussed efforts to send humanitarian aid into Aleppo and to reach a political solution in the country. No specific details were released.
If the regime does take control of the key city, it would mark a turning point in the war, putting the regime back in charge of all five major cities in Syria and making a political opposition far less likely to succeed.