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Buses attacked en route to evacuation of Syrian villages
Buses attacked en route to evacuation of Syrian villages
Buses attacked en route to evacuation of Syrian villages
(35 minutes later)
Several buses en route to evacuate ill and injured people from the besieged Syrian villages of Fua and Kefraya have been attacked and burned, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights and Syrian state television says.
A deal to free east Aleppo’s remaining civilians in exchange for sick and wounded from two pro-government villages was again stalled on Sunday after six buses sent to evacuate the loyalist areas were stopped and torched.
Some buses, as well as Red Crescent vehicles, reached the entrance to the villages in Idlib province, which are besieged by insurgents.
The buses were intercepted in an area under the control of a jihadist faction aligned to the Syrian opposition, Jund al-Aqsa. The deal to partially lift a siege of the villages, Fua and Kefraya, had been opposed by the al-Qaida inspired Jabhat Fatah al Sham, which had been largely responsible for a three year siege of the majority Shia enclaves.
Forces loyal to the president, Bashar al-Assad, are demanding people be allowed to leave the two villages, most of whose residents are Shia Muslims, in exchange for allowing evacuations of rebels and civilians from east Aleppo.
Sabotage attempts have turned an urgent evacuation of up to 40,000 trapped civilians into a protracted series of negotiations, which allow trickles of refugees to leave, before stalling again.
Iran, and the Syrian regime have been determined to use the fate of east Aleppo to settle accounts with the opposition elsewhere in the country, while jihadists who influence parts of the rebel movement have delayed the process to win concessions as their grip on northern Syria steadily slips.
PHOTOS: Reports coming in that an "unknown rebel group" has attacked buses going to evacuate civilians from Kafraya and Fuah - @Ald_Aba pic.twitter.com/7xMPhumeu5
PHOTOS: Reports coming in that an "unknown rebel group" has attacked buses going to evacuate civilians from Kafraya and Fuah - @Ald_Aba pic.twitter.com/7xMPhumeu5
Syrian state media said “armed terrorists” had attacked five buses, burned and destroyed them.
Fua and Kefraya have been key bargaining chips throughout the conflict. Both have been besieged, but not with the same effect as east Aleppo.
The development came just hours after the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) said it hoped to resume the evacuation of civilians and wounded people from east Aleppo on Sunday.
For the past 18 months, Iran has tried to broker a deal with the powerful Islamist militia, Ahrar al-Sham, which would allow the remaining villagers to be relocated to Zabadani and Madaya, between Damascus and the Lebanese border.
Thousands of people are left in the rebel-held enclave, some sleeping on the streets in freezing temperatures, after the evacuation ground to a halt on Friday following a disagreement with pro-government forces.
In return, Sunni residents of each town would be sent to Fua and Kefraya, as part of a population swap that would change the geopolitics of the region and help build a Shia presence from the suburbs of Damascus into Lebanon’s Bekaa valley, and beyond to southern Lebanon. The population swaps were not part of the original deal terms, which were brokered between Russia and Turkey. However, soon after the deal was announced early last week, Iran made a series of its own demands.
The pro-Assad side was demanding the evacuation of the two villages besieged by Islamists. Rebels and a government official said a new deal that was being negotiated on Saturday to complete the evacuation of the rebel-held areas of east Aleppo would involve people leaving Fua and Kefraya and two other besieged towns, Madaya and Zabadani, near the Lebanese border.
In addition to relocating sectarian groups, Iran demanded the bodies of slain militia fighters that it had sent to Syria, including members of Hezbollah in Lebanon, and Iraqi militias. It had also demanded information about any fighters that had been taken prisoner.
Syrian state television reported on Sunday on a deal between the government and rebels to evacuate people from east Aleppo in return for the evacuation of people from Fua and Kefraya.
The chaos surrounding the swap underscores the stakes with east Aleppo in its deathroes and the six year war beginning to lose steam for the first time. It also underlines how a splintered opposition cannot control all the elements in the fight against the Syrian leadership, even as tens of thousands of civilians remain cornered, many of them in the open with little food in the depths of winter.
According to al-Ikhbariya TV news, about 1,200 civilians would initially be taken out of east Aleppo and a similar number from the two villages. Once evacuees from the villages safely arrived in government areas, Aleppo fighters and more of their family members would be allowed to leave in return for other batches of people departing Fua and Kefraya.
The opposition offered no immediate response to the bus attack. A claim of responsibility was posted on social media, purportedly by a front group, which spoke of the trapped Shia communities in strident sectarian tones.
The war monitor the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights earlier said the Islamist group formerly known as the Nusra Front had been preventing evacuation buses from entering the two besieged villages.
Meanwhile diplomatic efforts to secure a lifeline to those trapped in east Aleppo again appear to be in tatters, with the Russian ambassador to the United Nations vowing to veto a Security Council resolution to ensure outside monitoring of the evacuation process.
On Saturday, a day after the operation stalled, the ICRC urged Syria’s warring parties to agree quickly on a plan and provide “solid” safety guarantees for evacuees. Thousands of cold and scared people, including women, children, the sick and injured, remain in east Aleppo, the aid agency said in a statement on Saturday.
The vote, which was proposed by France, was due to take place on Sunday morning New York time and asked for the UN to “redeploy … humanitarian staff already on the ground to carry out adequate, neutral monitoring, direct observation and to report on evacuations from besieged parts of Aleppo and protection of civilians inside Aleppo.”
Residents say the estimated 15,000 people gathering in the main square in Aleppo’s Sukari district are most of the civilians left in the last rebel bastion, mainly families of fightersand other civilians, along with a few combatants. Every family has been allocated a number by organisers to allow them to board buses when they arrive.
It also urged that: “the evacuations of civilians must be voluntary and to final destinations of their choice, and protection must be provided to all civilians who choose or who have been forced to be evacuated and those who opt to remain in their homes.”
“Everyone is waiting until they are evacuated. They just want to escape,” said Salah al-Attar, a former teacher, with his five children, wife and mother.
The fate of more than 500 men who were detained inside Aleppo, or arrested at checkpoints as they tried to leave remains unknown and rights groups have expressed serious fears for their safety.
Thousands of people were evacuated on Thursday. They were the first to leave under a ceasefire deal that would end years of fighting for the city and mark a major victory for Assad.
By some estimates, up to 80,000 people have left east Aleppo in recent days, most crossing into the regime held west of the city. Around 8,000 people were evacuated to the north west Aleppo countryside as part of the evacuation deal. Opposition fighters were among the first to leave the city. Such a move had been central to the drafted terms, but was also being seen by some of the trapped civilians as an abandonment.
But the talks are proving difficult. Negotiations between pro-government and opposition forces, as well as their international backers, were believed to be still continuing on Sunday to finalise how the evacuations would take place and how many people would leave. It was not immediately clear if fighters were also being evacuated.
A senior Syrian rebel official from the powerful Ahrar al-Sham group involved in the talks on Saturday said the deal was being held up by Iran and its allied Shia militias, which were insisting people be allowed to leave the two villages before allowing the Aleppo evacuation to proceed.
Aleppo was divided between government and rebel areas in the war, which has lasted nearly six years, but a lightning advance by the Syrian army and its allies began in mid-November following months of intense airstrikes, forcing the insurgents out of most of the rebel-held territory within a matter of weeks.
The United Nations security council is due to vote on Sunday on a French-drafted resolution aimed at ensuring that UN officials can monitor evacuations from Aleppo and the protection of civilians who remain.
The draft text also “emphasises that the evacuations of civilians must be voluntary and to final destinations of their choice, and protection must be provided to all civilians who choose or who have been forced to be evacuated and those who opt to remain in their homes”.
It was not immediately clear how Russia would vote on the French-drafted resolution. Before the draft was circulated to the council, the Russian UN ambassador, Vitaly Churkin, said on Friday: “If it is a sensible initiative and we see it on paper, why not entertain this initiative?”
Russia, which has provided military backing to Assad’s troops, has vetoed six security council resolutions on Syria since the conflict started in 2011. China joined Moscow in vetoing five resolutions.
