Tag Archives: Aleppo

Thousands of civilians, fighters waiting to leave Aleppo

Rebel fighters and civilians wait to be evacuated from a rebel-held sector of eastern Aleppo, Syria December 18, 2016.

AMMAN (Reuters) – Thousands of rebels and fighters were still waiting on Thursday to be evacuated from the last rebel bastion in Aleppo but harsh weather was complicating the final phase of the operation, a rebel spokesman said.

Ahmed Kara Ali, spokesman for the rebel group Ahrar al Sham that is involved in departure negotiations, told Reuters “large numbers” were left but it was difficult to estimate how many remained, beyond it being in the thousands.

The operation to evacuate civilians and fighters from rebel-held eastern Aleppo has already brought out thousands of people since late last week. But obstacles have disrupted the departure of the last group, with rebels and Iranian-backed militias blaming each other for the delays.

Since the resumption of evacuations last night after a suspension, Kara Ali said 20 buses and over 600 civilian vehicles had left the rebel enclave for opposition-held areas in rural western Aleppo and Idlib province.

The last evacuees are believed to be fighters and their families.

Another rebel official said a heavy snow storm that hit northern Syria and the sheer numbers of civilians still remaining were among the factors behind the delay in the mass evacuation.

“The numbers of civilians, their cars alongside and of course the weather all are making the evacuation slow,” Munir al-Sayal, head of the political wing of Ahrar al Sham, said.

Sayal said he expected the evacuation to end before evening if there were no hitches and matters proceeded normally.

“If it proceeds in this routine way, we should be done this evening,” the senior rebel official told Reuters.

(Reporting by Suleiman Al-Khalidi; Editing by Tom Heneghan)

Aleppo evacuation resumes after day-long hold-up

Evacuees leaving Aleppo

By Ellen Francis and Lisa Barrington

BEIRUT (Reuters) – Buses carrying Syrian civilians and fighters began leaving the last rebel-held enclave of Aleppo on Wednesday after being stalled for a day, aid officials and pro-government media reports said.

Obstacles hindering evacuations from east Aleppo and from two villages besieged by rebels outside the city had been overcome and the operation would be completed within hours, according to a news service run by the Lebanese group Hezbollah, an ally of the Syrian government.

The eventual departure of the thousands left in the insurgent zone will hand full control of the city to President Bashar al-Assad, the biggest prize of Syria’s nearly six-year-old civil war.

“Buses are now moving again from east Aleppo. We hope that this continues so that people can be safely evacuated,” a U.N. official in Syria told Reuters, as snow began to fall on Aleppo.

People had been waiting in freezing temperatures since the evacuation hit problems on Tuesday, when dozens of buses were stuck in Aleppo and the evacuation of the two Shi’ite villages, al-Foua and Kefraya, also stalled. Rebels and government forces blamed each other for the hold-up.

Charity Save the Children said heavy snows were hampering aid efforts.

“Our partners are trying to treat injured children who have fled Aleppo but the situation is dire. Many have had to have limbs amputated because they did not receive care on time, and far too many are weak and malnourished,” a statement said.

One 5-month-old girl had two broken legs, a broken arm and an open wound in her stomach, the statement said.

Many of those who had escaped Aleppo were sleeping in unheated buildings or tents in sub-zero temperatures. Children have been separated from their parents in the chaos as they run to get food when they get off the buses, the charity said.

EVACUATION PLAN

With obstructions to the evacuation plan apparently overcome, the Hezbollah news service said 20 buses carrying fighters and their families had moved from east Aleppo on Wednesday toward rebel-held countryside. Syrian TV said four buses and two ambulances arrived in government-controlled parts of Aleppo from al-Foua and Kefraya.

Government forces had insisted the two villages must be included in the deal to bring people out of east Aleppo.

So far, about 26,000 people have been evacuated from Aleppo, according to aid officials. A U.N. official said 750 people had so far been evacuated from al-Foua and Kefraya.

Aleppo’s rebel zone is a wasteland of flattened buildings, concrete rubble and bullet-pocked walls, where tens of thousands lived until recent days under intense bombardment even after medical and rescue services had collapsed.

Rebel-held parts of the once-flourishing economic center with its renowned ancient sites have been pulverized in a war which has killed more than 300,000, created the world’s worst refugee crisis and allowed for the rise of Islamic State.

But in the western part of the city, held throughout the war by the government, there were big street parties on Tuesday night, along with the lighting of a Christmas tree, as residents celebrated the end of fighting.

The Syrian army has used loudspeakers to broadcast warnings to rebels that it was about to enter their rapidly diminishing enclave and told them to speed up their evacuation.

Control of Aleppo would be a major victory for Assad, and his main allies Iran and Russia, against rebels who have defied him in Syria’s most populous city for four years.

U.N. MONITORS EVACUATION

The United Nations had said it had sent 20 more staff to east Aleppo to monitor the evacuation.

“Some have arrived yesterday and more will be arriving today and in the coming days,” Jens Laerke, U.N. spokesman in Geneva told Reuters.

Various problems have beset the evacuation, with estimates of how many have left and how many remain varying widely.

Assad’s government is backed by Russian air power and Shi’ite militias including Lebanon’s Hezbollah movement and Iraq’s Harakat al-Nujaba. The mostly Sunni rebels include groups supported by Turkey, the United States and Gulf monarchies.

For four years, the city was split between a rebel-held eastern sector and the government-held western districts. During the summer, the army and allies forces besieged the rebel sector before using intense bombardment and ground assaults to retake it in recent months.

Russian air strikes were the most important factor in Assad’s triumph. They enabled his forces to press the siege of eastern Aleppo to devastating effect.

On the ground, Shi’ite militias from as far afield as Afghanistan played an important role for Assad.

Despite victory in Aleppo, Assad still faces great challenges in restoring the power of his state. While he controls the most important cities in western Syria and on the coast, armed groups including Islamic State control swathes of territory elsewhere in the country.

(Additional reporting by Stephanie Nebehay; Writing by Angus McDowall and Peter Millership; Editing by Giles Elgood)

After the battle, Aleppo shows its scars

A part of Aleppo before and after the war

By Laila Bassam

ALEPPO, Syria (Reuters) – Before the war, Aleppo’s ancient walled citadel drew in armies of visitors to one of the Middle East’s greatest treasures.

But for the past four years the Citadel’s high stone ramparts have been on the front line of fighting pitting the Syrian army and its allies against rebels who occupied much of the Old City surrounding the fortress.

Sudden advances by the army led to a ceasefire last week and evacuation of insurgents and many civilians, ending the warfare in Aleppo and putting the city entirely into government hands.

Reuters photographs from before and after the fighting reveal how the city has been scarred by years of air strikes, shelling, street fighting, fires and neglect. For a slideshow see: http://reut.rs/2ibm9sD

The fate of Aleppo, listed by the United Nations as a World Heritage Site, has been the subject of great anxiety for city residents, archaeologists, historians and travelers, even as they despair for the human suffering caused by the fighting.

“We are now exactly in front of the Citadel’s entrance. These streets are very familiar. My school was nearby. Now, only part of it is left,” said Abdel Rahman Berry, a lawyer. “It was ruined. They ravaged our childhood memories,” he added.

Large sections of Aleppo’s Islamic-era covered market or souk, one of the most extensive in the world, were destroyed in clashes in 2012 and 2013, and the 11th century minaret of the Umayyad mosque was brought down by shelling.

During a visit to the Old City and inside the Umayyad mosque with the Syrian army, reporters were shown rubble-strewn streets and scorched walls that were once part of the souk, pocked with bullet holes and daubed with slogans.

The Umayyad mosque was also scarred by the fighting, and the remains of its ancient stone minaret lay in a heap in one corner where it had collapsed after suffering a direct hit, but despite damage, its elegant floor and arcaded walls remained.

“THE EYE AND ITS PUPIL”

While the city, one of the oldest continuously habited in the world, was split into warring government and rebel sectors, the army retained control of the citadel even when it was surrounded by insurgents on three sides and could only be accessed by a tunnel.

“There were around 25 of us protecting the citadel. We used to switch with armed men who were stationed in the old market through a tunnel that was dug underneath,” said a Syrian soldier from the Citadel’s garrison.

Despite that exposed position, and repeated attempts by rebels to capture it, the damage to the Citadel, with its towering gatehouse and sloping arched bridge, was not as bad as elsewhere in the Old City. Government snipers fired at rebels through arrow slits in walls.

“There is some damage but it can be managed. The situation is good inside the Citadel but the disaster and the real damage was inflicted on the old market,” said Mamoun Abdelkarim, Syria’s Director General of Antiquities.

During its stormy history, Aleppo has been controlled by Hittites, Assyrians, Arabs, Mongols, Mamluks and Ottomans and it bears the marks of many of those conquerors in its diverse architectural styles.

The great Ayyubid leader Salah al-Din, who battled European Crusaders in the 12th century, described Aleppo as being “the eye of Syria, and the citadel is its pupil”.

No stranger to war and disaster, the Citadel was damaged by the Mongol invasion of 1260 and again destroyed by invading forces in 1400. It was used as a barracks for Ottoman troops and more recently for soldiers during the French mandate. It sustained heavy damage in the earthquake of 1822.

Among important features lost in recent fighting were medieval mosques and trading houses. Others, including the al-Shibani church school, evidence of Aleppo’s history of religious tolerance, and the 13th century Nahasin bathhouse were damaged.

Aleppo’s Old City and citadel had been restored in 2004.

One of the tactics used by rebels in the intense street fighting through the Old City’s narrow alleyways was the detonation of mines, dug beneath army positions in tunnels. The soldier said even on top of the citadel one such blast, under the Carlton Hotel, a landmark, had felt like an earthquake.

“The bodies of our comrades are still under the hotel rubble,” he added.

(Reporting By Laila Bassam in Aleppo; Additional reporting by Kinda Makieh in Damascus and Dahlia Nehme in Beirut; Writing by Angus McDowall, editing by Peter Millership)

Syrian girl, 7, who tweeted from Aleppo meets Turkey’s Erdogan

Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan meets with Syrian girl Bana Alabed, known as Aleppo's tweeting girl, at the Presidential Palace in Ankara, Turkey, December 21, 2016.

ISTANBUL (Reuters) – A seven-year-old Syrian girl who drew global attention with her Twitter updates from besieged Aleppo met Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan at his palace in Ankara on Wednesday.

Photographs released on Erdogan’s official Twitter account showed the president hugging Bana Alabed as she sat on his lap.

Bana and her mother Fatemah were evacuated safely along with 25,000 other people from the rebel-held eastern part of Aleppo this week. Turkey has supported rebels fighting Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

“I was pleased to host @AlabedBana and her family at the Presidential Complex today. Turkey will always stand with the people of Syria,” Erdogan said on his official Twitter account.

Helped by her mother, who manages the @AlabedBana account, Bana Alabed has uploaded pictures and videos of life during the nearly six-year-old Syrian war, gaining around 352,000 followers on the micro-blogging site since September.

Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said when Bana and her mother were evacuated from Aleppo that she would be brought to Turkey with her family.

The eventual departure of thousands left in Aleppo’s insurgent zone will hand full control of the city to Assad, the biggest prize of the nearly six-year-old civil war.

(Writing by Daren Butler; Editing by David Dolan and Mark Heinrich)

Syrian army poised to enter Aleppo’s last rebel enclave

By Angus McDowall and Maria Tsvetkova

BEIRUT/MOSCOW (Reuters) – As President Bashar al-Assad’s army closed in on the last rebel enclave in Aleppo on Tuesday, Russia, Iran and Turkey said they were ready to help broker a Syrian peace deal.

The Syrian army used loudspeakers to broadcast warnings to insurgents that it was poised to enter their rapidly diminishing area during the day and told them to speed up their evacuation of the city.

Complete control of Aleppo would be a major victory for Assad against rebels who have defied him in Syria’s most populous city for four years.

Ministers from Russia, Iran and Turkey adopted a document they called the “Moscow Declaration”, which set out the principles that any peace agreement should follow. At talks in the Russian capital, they also backed an expanded ceasefire in Syria.

“Iran, Russia and Turkey are ready to facilitate the drafting of an agreement, which is already being negotiated, between the Syrian government and the opposition, and to become its guarantors,” the declaration said.

The move underlines the growing strength of Moscow’s links with Tehran and Ankara, despite the murder on Monday of Russia’s ambassador to Turkey, and reflects Russian President Vladimir Putin’s desire to cement his influence in the Middle East and beyond.

Russia and Iran back Assad while Turkey has backed some rebel groups.

Putin said last week that he and his Turkish counterpart Tayyip Erdogan were working to organize a new series of Syrian peace negotiations without the involvement of the United States or the United Nations.

For his part, U.N. Syria mediator Staffan de Mistura intends to convene peace talks in Geneva on Feb. 8.

GRIM EVACUATION

In Syria, an operation to evacuate civilians and fighters from rebel-held eastern Aleppo has now brought out 37,500 people since late last week, Turkey said. Turkish and Russian ministers estimated the evacuation would be complete within two days.

But it is hard to know if that goal is realistic, given the problems that have beset the evacuation so far, and the wide variation in estimates of how many have left and how many remain. The International Committee of the Red Cross put the number evacuated since the operation began on Thursday at only 25,000.

A rebel official in Turkey told Reuters that even after thousands left on Monday, only about half of the civilians who wanted to leave had done so.

Insurgent fighters would only leave once all the civilians who wanted to go had departed, the rebel said. The ceasefire and evacuation agreement allows rebels to carry personal weapons but not heavier arms.

Estimates of the number of people waiting for evacuation range from a few thousand to tens of thousands.

The United Nations said Syria had authorized the world body to send 20 more staff to east Aleppo who would monitor the evacuation.

A U.N. official said 750 people had been evacuated from the two besieged Shi’ite villages of Foua and Kefraya, which government forces had insisted must be included in the deal to bring people out of Aleppo.

The evacuations are part of a ceasefire arrangement that ends fighting in Aleppo, once Syria’s most populous city.

Conditions for those being evacuated are grim, with evacuees waiting for convoys of buses in freezing winter temperatures. An aid worker said that some evacuees had reported that children had died during the long, cold wait.

PATRIOTIC MUSIC

In government-held parts of Aleppo, the mood was very different.

A large crowd thronged to a sports hall in the city, waving Syrian flags and dancing to patriotic music, a large portrait of Assad hanging on one wall, in a celebration of the rebels’ defeat in the city that was broadcast live on state television.

The rebel withdrawal from Aleppo after a series of rapid advances by the army and allied Shi’ite militias including Hezbollah since late November has brought Assad his biggest victory of the nearly six-year-old war.

However, despite the capture of Aleppo and progress against insurgents near Damascus, the fighting is far from over, with large areas remaining in rebel control in the northwestern countryside and in the far south.

The jihadist group Islamic State also controls swathes of territory in the deserts and Euphrates river basin in eastern Syria.

Assad is backed by Russian air power and Shi’ite militias including Lebanon’s Hezbollah movement and Iraq’s Harakat al-Nujaba. The mostly Sunni rebels include groups supported by Turkey, the United States and Gulf monarchies.

For four years, the city was split between a rebel-held eastern sector and the government-held western districts. During the summer, the army and its allies besieged the rebel sector before using intense bombardment and ground assaults to retake it in recent months.

 

(Reporting by Angus McDowall, Humeyra Pamuk, Stephanie Nebehay, Peter Hobson, writing by Giles Elgood, editing by Peter Millership)

Russian ambassador shot dead in Ankara gallery

Russian Ambassador to Turkey Andrei Karlov lies on the ground after he was shot by unidentified man at an art gallery in Ankara.

By Tuvan Gumrukcu and Umit Bektas

ANKARA (Reuters) – The Russian ambassador to Turkey was shot in the back and killed as he gave a speech at an Ankara art gallery on Monday by an off-duty police officer who shouted “Don’t forget Aleppo” and “Allahu Akbar” as he opened fire.

The Russian foreign ministry confirmed the death of envoy Andrei Karlov, calling it a “terrorist act”. Relations between Moscow and Ankara have long been strained over the conflict in Syria, with the two support opposing sides in the war.

Russia is an ally of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and its air strikes helped Syrian forces end rebel resistance last week in the northern city of Aleppo. Turkey, which seeks Assad’s ouster, has been repairing ties with Moscow after shooting down a Russian warplane over Syria last year.

The Ankara mayor said on Twitter the gunman was a 22-year-old police officer. Two security sources told Reuters he was not on duty at the time.

The attacker was smartly dressed in black suit and tie and stood, alone, behind the ambassador as he made a speech at the art exhibition, a person at the scene told Reuters.

“He took out his gun and shot the ambassador from behind. We saw him lying on the floor and then we ran out,” said the witness, who asked not to be identified. People took refuge in adjoining rooms as the shooting continued.

A video showed the attacker shouting: “Don’t forget Aleppo, don’t forget Syria!” and “Allahu Akbar (God is Greatest) as screams rang out. He paced about and shouted as he held the gun in one hand and waved the other in the air.

A Reuters cameraman at the scene said gunfire rang out for some time after the attack. Turkey’s Anadolu news agency said the gunman had been “neutralized”, apparently killed.

Another photograph showed four people the ambassador lying on the floor.

“We regard this as a terrorist act,” said Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova. “Terrorism will not win and we will fight against it decisively.”

It was not clear whether the gunman was a lone operator, driven perhaps by popular discontent over Russian action in Syria or affiliated to a group like Islamic State, which has carried out a string of bomb attacks in Turkey in the last year.

Since a failed coup in July, President Tayyip Erdogan has been purging the police of supporters of an exiled cleric and former ally, Fethullah Gulen, whom he characterizes as the chief terrorist threat to Turkey.

Russian Ambassador to Turkey Andrei Karlov makes a speech at an art gallery shortly before he was shot in Ankara, Turkey.

Russian Ambassador to Turkey Andrei Karlov makes a speech at an art gallery shortly before he was shot in Ankara, Turkey.
REUTERS/Ugur Kavas

U.S. STATE DEPARTMENT

Erdogan contacted Russian President Vladimir Putin to brief him on the shooting, a Turkish official said. It was not immediately clear if Erdogan would release a statement later.

Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu was due to meet with his Russian and Iranian counterparts in Russia on Tuesday to discuss the situation in Syria. Officials said the meeting would still go on, despite the attack.

Turkey’s foreign ministry said it would not allow the attack to cast a shadow over Ankara’s relations with Moscow.

“The attack comes at a bad time: Moscow and Ankara have only recently restored diplomatic ties after Turkey downed a Russian aircraft in November 2015,” the Stratfor think-tank said.

“Though the attack will strain relations between the two countries, it is not likely to rupture them altogether.”

The U.S. State Department, involved in diplomatic contacts with Russia in an attempt to resolve a refugee crisis unfolding around the city of Aleppo, condemned the attack.

Tensions have escalated in recent weeks as Russian-backed Syrian forces have fought for control of the eastern part of Aleppo, triggering a stream of refugees.

Turkey has been hit by multiple bomb attacks that have been claimed by Kurdish militants, and beat back an attempted coup in July, where rogue soldiers commandeered tanks, warplanes and helicopters in attempt to overthrow the parliament.

Since then, the government has launched a sweeping crackdown on the judiciary, police and civil service in attempt to root out the coup plotters. The involvement of a police officer in Monday’s attack could raise questions for Ereogan about a force denuded now of a number of senior and rank-and-file officers.

(Additional reporting by Orhan Coskun, Nevzat Devranoglu, Tulay Karadeniz, Ercan Gurses and Gulsen Solaker in Ankara; Humeyra Pamuk and Ece Toksabay in Istanbul; Andrew Osborn and Andrey Ostroukh in Moscow; Writing by Daren Butler and David Dolan; editing by Ralph Boulton and Mark Trevelyan)

Russian ambassador shot dead in Ankara

Turkish police secure the area near an art gallery where the Russian Ambassador to Turkey Andrei Karlov was shot, in Ankara.

ANKARA (Reuters) – The Russian ambassador to Ankara was shot dead in an attack at an art gallery in the Turkish capital on Monday by a gunman shouting “Don’t forget Aleppo”.

A Russian foreign ministry spokeswoman confirmed the death of envoy Andrei Karlov, which marked one of the most serious spillovers of the Syria conflict into Turkey.

Andrei Gennadiyevich Karlov in a 2005 photo.

Andrei Gennadiyevich Karlov in a 2005 photo. REUTERS/Korea News Service

Russia is a close ally of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and its air strikes were instrumental in helping Syrian forces end rebel resistance last week in the northern city of Aleppo.

The Anadolu news agency said the gunman had been “neutralized” soon after the attack, Relations between Moscow and Ankara have long been fraught over the conflict, with the two supporting opposing sides.

The attacker was smartly dressed in black suit and tie, and standing behind the ambassador as he made a speech at the art exhibition, a person at the scene told Reuters.

“He took out his gun and shot the ambassador from behind. We saw him lying on the floor and then we ran out,” said the witness, who asked not to be identified.

A Reuters cameraman at the scene said gunfire rang out for some time after the attack.

A video showed the attacker shouting: “Don’t forget Aleppo, don’t forget Syria!”

As screams rang out, the gunman could then be seen pacing about and shouting as he held the gun in one hand and waved the other in the air.

Another photograph showed four people including what appeared to be the ambassador lying on the floor.

Russia and Turkey have both been involved in the conflict in Syria, which borders Turkey. Turkey has been a staunch opponent of Assad, while Russia has deployed troops and its air force in support of the Syrian leader.

The U.S. State Department, involved in diplomatic contacts with Russia in an attempt to resolve a refugee crisis unfolding around the city of Aleppo, condemned the attack.

Tensions have escalated in recent weeks as Russian-backed Syrian forces have fought for control of the eastern part of the city of Aleppo, triggering a stream of refugees.

It was not immediately clear who carried out the attack. Islamic State militants have been active in Turkey and carried out several bomb attacks on Turkish targets over the last year.

(Reporting by Tuvan Gumrukcu; Writing by Daren Butler; editing by Ralph Boulton and Mark Trevelyan)

Girl, 7, who tweeted from Aleppo is evacuated from Syrian city

A still image taken on December 19, 2016 from a handout video posted by IHH, shows a still photograph of Syrian girl who tweeted from Aleppo, Bana Alabed, posing with IHH aid worker Burak Karacaoglu in al-Rashideen, Syria.

(Reuters) – A seven-year-old Syrian girl who captured global attention with her Twitter updates from besieged Aleppo has been evacuated from the city, according to an aid organization.

Helped by her mother, Fatemah, who manages the @AlabedBana account, Bana Alabed has uploaded pictures and videos of life during the nearly six-year-old Syrian war, gaining around 331,000 followers on the micro-blogging site since September.

Last week, mother and daughter shared a video of themselves asking U.S. First Lady Michelle Obama for help in reaching a safe place after advances by the Syrian army and allied Shi’ite Muslim militias into rebel-held eastern parts of the city.

A ceasefire and evacuation deal was agreed last Tuesday but thousands of people have struggled to leave due to hold-ups.

“This morning @AlabedBana was also rescued from #Aleppo with her family. We warmly welcomed them,” Turkish aid agency IHH wrote on Twitter on Monday with a picture of the smiling young girl alongside an aid worker.

Speaking to the pro-opposition Qasioun news agency in al-Rashideen on the southwest edge of Aleppo, Fatemah said in English: “I am sad because I leave my country, I leave my soul there … We can’t stay there because there are a lot of bombs, and no clean water, no medicine.

“When we get out, we had a lot of suffering because we stayed almost 24 hours in bus without water and food or anything,” Fatemah continued. “We stayed like a prisoner, a hostage but finally we arrived here.”

An operation to bring thousands of people out of the last rebel-held enclave of Aleppo was under way again on Monday after being delayed for several days, together with the evacuation of two besieged pro-government villages in nearby Idlib province.

(Reporting by Reuters Television; editing by Mark Heinrich)

Thousands evacuated from Aleppo after deal over besieged villages

Evacuees from a rebel-held area of Aleppo arrive at insurgent-held al-Rashideen, Syria

By Angus McDowall and Ellen Francis

BEIRUT (Reuters) – Thousands were evacuated from the last rebel-held enclave of the Aleppo on Monday after a deal was reached to allow people to leave two besieged pro-government villages in nearby Idlib province.

In bitter winter weather, convoys of buses from eastern Aleppo reached rebel-held areas to the west of the city, and more buses left the Shi’ite Muslim villages of al-Foua and Kefraya for government lines, according to a U.N. official and the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a monitoring group.

The United Nations Security Council agreed a resolution calling for U.N. officials and others to be allowed to monitor evacuations from east Aleppo and the safety of civilians still there.

The Syrian ambassador to the United Nations, Bashar Ja’afari, denounced the resolution as propaganda, saying the last of the rebels were leaving and Aleppo would be “clean” by Monday evening.

The recapture of Aleppo is Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s biggest victory so far in the nearly six-year-old war, but the fighting is not over with large parts of the country still controlled by insurgent and Islamist groups.

Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said 20,000 civilians had been evacuated from Aleppo so far.

Nearly 50 children, some critically injured, were rescued from eastern Aleppo, where they had been trapped in an orphanage, the United Nations said.

The evacuation of civilians from the two villages had been demanded by the Syrian army and its allies before they would allow fighters and civilians trapped in Aleppo to depart. The stand-off halted the Aleppo evacuation over the weekend.

“Complex evacuations from East Aleppo and Foua & Kefraya now in full swing. More than 900 buses needed to evacuate all. We must not fail,” Jan Egeland, who chairs the United Nations aid task force in Syria, tweeted.

INTENSE COLD, LONG WAIT

Ahmad al-Dbis, a medical aid worker heading a team evacuating patients from Aleppo, said 89 buses had left the city. “Some evacuees told us that a few children died from the long wait and the intense cold while they were waiting to evacuate,” he told Reuters.

For those still in rebel-held Aleppo, conditions were grim, according to Aref al-Aref, a nurse and photographer there.

“I’m still in Aleppo. I’m waiting for them to evacuate the children and women first. It’s very cold and there’s hunger. It’s a long wait,” he told Reuters. “People are burning wood and clothes to keep warm in the streets.”

Photographs of people evacuated from Aleppo showed large groups of people standing or crouching with their belongings or loading sacks onto trucks.

Children in winter clothes carried small backpacks or played with kittens. One older man, in traditional Arab robes and headdress, sat holding a stick.

Evacuees from a rebel-held area of Aleppo arrive at insurgent-held al-Rashideen, Syria

Evacuees from a rebel-held area of Aleppo arrive at insurgent-held al-Rashideen, Syria December 19, 2016. REUTERS/Ammar Abdullah

BUSES BURNED

On Sunday, some of the buses sent to al-Foua and Kefraya to carry evacuees out were attacked and torched by armed men.

That incident threatened to derail the evacuations, the result of intense negotiations between Russia – Assad’s main supporter – and Turkey, which backs some large rebel groups.

The foreign and defence ministers of Russia, Iran and Turkey will hold talks in Moscow on Tuesday aimed at giving fresh impetus for a solution in Aleppo.

At stake is the fate of thousands of people still stuck in the last rebel bastion in Aleppo after a series of sudden advances by the Syrian army and allied Shi’ite militias under an intense bombardment that pulverised large sections of the city.

They have been waiting for the chance to leave Aleppo since the ceasefire and evacuation deal was agreed late last Tuesday, but have been prevented from doing so during days of hold-ups.

In the square in Aleppo’s Sukari district, organisers gave every family a number to allow them access to buses.

“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.

CAMP IN TURKEY

Thousands of people were evacuated on Thursday, the first to leave under the ceasefire deal that ends fighting in the city where violence erupted in 2012, a year after the start of conflict in other parts of Syria.

They were taken to rebel-held districts of the countryside west of Aleppo. Turkey has said Aleppo evacuees could also be housed in a camp to be constructed in Syria near the Turkish border to the north.

For four years the city was split between a rebel-held eastern sector and the government-held western districts. During the summer, the army and its allies besieged the rebel sector before using intense bombardment and ground assaults to retake it in recent months.

A Reuters reporter who visited recaptured districts of Aleppo in recent days saw large swathes reduced to ruins, with rubble everywhere and sections of the famous Old City all but destroyed.

Traders began to return to their stores in the Old City to see if they could be fixed up.

One merchant, Jamal Deeb, said: “We are all here to see what the situation is like, and to consider reconstructing the stores. We do not want to leave things as they are, hand in hand we want to rebuild everything once again.”

Assad is backed in the war by Russian air power and Shi’ite militias including Lebanon’s Hezbollah movement and Iraq’s Harakat al-Nujaba. The mostly Sunni rebels include groups supported by Turkey, the United States and Gulf monarchies.

East of Aleppo, several villages held by Islamic State have been captured by the Syrian Democratic Forces, a coalition of militias backed by the United States that includes a strong Kurdish contingent, the Observatory said.

The advance is part of a campaign backed by an international coalition to drive Islamic State from its Syrian capital of Raqqa.

(Reporting by Angus McDowall, Humeyra Pamuk, Stephanie Nebehay, writing by Giles Elgood, editing by Peter Millership)

Turkey to set up camp for Aleppo evacuees in Syria

By Umit Ozdal

CILVEGOZU, Turkey (Reuters) – Turkey plans to set up a camp inside Syria to host people evacuated from the city of Aleppo but will continue to take the sick and wounded to Turkish hospitals, officials said on Friday.

Two potential sites, around 3.5 km (2 miles) inside Syria, have been identified for a camp with the capacity to host up to 80,000 people, two senior officials told Reuters.

“Work on the infrastructure for the camp will begin shortly,” another official from the Turkish aid organization IHH said by phone from inside Syria. The camp will be jointly set up by the Turkish Red Crescent, disaster agency AFAD and IHH.

The IHH official said evacuees had so far largely found shelter with relatives in and around Syria’s Idlib province, southwest of Aleppo, but added that work to identify those with nowhere to go was under way.

Some arrived on Friday at a clinic in Syria close to the Turkish border gate of Cilvegozu where they were tended to by Turkish aid workers, video footage obtained by Reuters showed.

“We were bombed by a plane,” said one man, his head and arm bandaged, lying on a bed hugging his young son.

“All my family were killed and all I have left is him and a daughter,” he said. He had been told his daughter had been brought to Turkey but did not know her condition or whereabouts.

Turkey has taken in 55 wounded or sick evacuees, according to Hasan Aydinlik, head of an emergency response division of the Turkish Health Ministry. He told reporters at the Cilvegozu crossing that one of the wounded had died in hospital while four people, including a child, were in serious condition.

The evacuation of the last opposition-held areas of Aleppo was suspended on Friday after pro-government militias demanded that wounded people should also be brought out of two Shi’ite Muslim villages being besieged by rebels.

Turkey says that close to 8,000 people – rebels and civilians – have been evacuated under a ceasefire deal it brokered with Russia.

Turkey is already sheltering around 2.7 million Syrian refugees. An aid official with Syrian NGO Shafak, working on the Aleppo evacuation, said he expected more people to head for the Turkish border as the villages west of Aleppo were now full.

Aleppo was divided between government and rebel areas of control for much of the nearly six-year-old civil war. But a lightning advance by the Syrian army and its allies that began in mid-November saw the insurgents lose most of their territory.

(Reporting by Orhan Coskun and Ercan Gurses in Ankara, Humeyra Pamuk in Istanbul; Editing by Daren Butler and Nick Tattersall/Mark Heinrich)