Tag Archives: besieged rebel enclave

Sick and injured start leaving Syria’s Ghouta

Children look through a bus window during evacuation from the besieged town of Douma, Eastern Ghouta, in Damascus, Syria March 13, 2018. REUTERS/Bassam Khabieh

By Ellen Francis

BEIRUT (Reuters) – Sick and injured civilians left a rebel enclave in Syria’s eastern Ghouta on Tuesday under the first medical evacuation since a massive assault began nearly a month ago.

Women carrying infants, men hobbling on crutches and an old man in a wheelchair waited at a school nearby, along with dozens who exited through the al-Wafideen crossing, a witness said.

During the army’s offensive, more than 1,100 civilians have died in the last big rebel bastion near the capital, the U.N. office of humanitarian affairs says.

Syrian government forces have captured swathes of eastern Ghouta, a pocket of satellite towns and farmland, splintering it into three separate zones in recent days.

Yasser Delwan, a political official with the Jaish al-Islam rebel faction, said the patients who left the town of Douma were the first of several batches.

The evacuees come from a list of nearly 1,000 people which U.N. officials have said need emergency treatment outside, he added. Jaish al-Islam said on Monday it had reached a medical evacuation deal with the Syrian government’s key ally, Russia, after indirect talks.

For months, the United Nations has pleaded with authorities to allow the evacuation of hundreds of patients, including children with cancer. The Ghouta enclave is home to nearly 400,000 people, under army siege since 2013 without enough food, water, or medicine, the world body says.

The government assault on eastern Ghouta has become one of the bloodiest offensives of the war, and is on course to deal rebels their biggest defeat since the battle of Aleppo in 2016.

Russia has offered rebels safe passage out with their families if they surrender the territory, echoing deals that saw Damascus take control of major cities across western Syria.

The two main Ghouta factions have vowed to stay and fight, and have denied government allegations that they have blocked residents from leaving.

CIVILIAN EVACUEES

Hamza Birqdar, Jaish al-Islam’s military spokesman, said in a video online that the fighters would continue to defend their territory until the end.

With the Ghouta now split into different parts, Delwan said his rebel faction was in charge only of evacuations from Douma, and not from other towns. If the deal proceeds, hundreds “will all be evacuated in batches for treatment, some in Damascus and some outside of Syria,” he told Reuters.

State media said others followed the first group which included about 35 people. They would go to a shelter nearby on the outskirts of the Syrian capital Damascus.

State TV accompanied some of the evacuees and broadcast interviews in which they said insurgents had prevented them from leaving. “We weren’t able to come out,” one man said. “They are not allowing anyone at all, they attack them and sent them back.”

Moscow and Damascus say their forces only target armed militants and seek to stop mortar salvoes by Islamist insurgents that killed dozens of people in the capital. They accuse the rebels of using civilians as human shields, which the fighters deny.

Troops pressed on with the assault on Tuesday and took some farmland around the town of Jisreen, said a military media unit run by Iran-backed Lebanese Shi’ite group Hezbollah, which fights alongside the Syrian army.

The Civil Defence in Ghouta, a rescue service in rebel territory, said air strikes pounded Jisreen, Zamalka, and Irbeen – part of a zone further south separated from Douma.

Families are sleeping in the open in the streets in Douma, with no more room in the basements to shelter from the bombs, local authorities have said.

(Writing by Ellen Francis; Editing by Paul Tait, Raissa Kasolowsky and Peter Graff)

Aid convoy delivers food in Syria’s besieged Ghouta despite bombardment

BEIRUT (Reuters) – An emergency aid convoy crossed front lines into the besieged rebel enclave of eastern Ghouta and delivered its supplies on Friday, braving shellfire and air strikes in the area amid a fierce government offensive.

The 13 food trucks unloaded all their food aid in the town of Douma and returned to government-held territory despite fighting which the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) said came “extremely close” to the convoy.

In less than two weeks, the Syrian army has retaken nearly all the farmland in eastern Ghouta under cover of near ceaseless shelling and air strikes, leaving only a dense sprawl of towns – about half the territory – still under insurgent control.

The onslaught has killed more than 1,000 people, the medical charity Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) said on Thursday. The war monitor, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, on Friday gave a death toll of 950 civilians in the campaign.

For eastern Ghouta’s civilians, trapped in underground shelters but deprived of food and water, there is a constant dilemma – whether to seek supplies or stay inside.

“People were hopeful after the bombardment decreased and went out onto the streets. But then air strikes began again, and there are still people under the rubble that we couldn’t get out,” said Moayad al-Hafi, a man in the town of Saqba.

Damascus and its main ally Moscow have both said the assault is needed to stop rebel shelling of the nearby capital Damascus and end the rule of Islamist insurgents over civilians in eastern Ghouta, where some 400,000 people live.

But U.N. human rights chief Zeid Ra’ad al-Hussein has said, in comments criticized by Syria’s government, that the assault was “legally, and morally, unsustainable”.

There was a pause in the government’s bombardment overnight, but it soon resumed air strikes and shelling after the convoy carrying food parcels crossed into eastern Ghouta, according to residents and the Observatory.

Syrian state television and a witness later said bullets and mortars were fired from inside the rebel enclave at the al-Wafideen crossing point, through which the convoy had entered eastern Ghouta.

“Shelling in proximity of Douma (in) eastern Ghouta today is putting the…convoy at risk,” U.N. resident coordinator Ali al-Za’tari said in a statement.

The fighting had resurged, he added, “despite assurances of safety from parties including the Russian Federation”.

Robert Mardini, the ICRC’s Middle East director, said in a statement: “We were taken aback by the fighting that broke out despite guarantees.”

A Douma resident, in a voice message over which loud explosions were audible, said four jets were in the sky and residential areas had come under air attack.

The food was supposed to be delivered on Monday when another aid convoy entered Douma, but fighting forced it to leave early without unloading everything.

The 2,400 food parcels delivered can sustain 12,000 people for one month, and 3,248 wheat flour bags were also unloaded, according to the ICRC.

Defeat in eastern Ghouta would deal the rebels their biggest blow since the fall of Aleppo – Syria’s second city – in December 2016 by forcing them from their only big stronghold near Syria’s capital.

For President Bashar al-Assad, it would mark a victory as he builds on the military momentum created by Russia’s 2015 entry into the war, which has restored his rule over swathes of Syria.

In many cases, rebels have surrendered terrain in return for safe passage to other opposition areas along with relatives and other civilians loath to fall back under Assad’s rule.

“ONE MEAL IN SEVERAL DAYS”

Bilal Abu Salah, a resident of Douma, said shortages were causing great hardship. “Entire families eat one meal in several days,” he said.

U.N. aid agencies have pleaded with the Syrian government and its ally Russia to halt the campaign and let aid in.

Filippo Grandi, the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, said on Fridayaid agencies in Syria often struggled to access besieged areas even with permission from political leaders.

“It’s very much the checkpoint on the ground that doesn’t allow you to go through. This is the reality of that terrible war,” he said in Beirut.

The Syrian government has opened what it calls safe routes out of the enclave, but no inhabitants are known to have left yet.

Damascus and Moscow accuse the insurgents of shooting at civilians to prevent them fleeing the fighting into government areas. A Reuters witness said there was small arms and mortar fire from rebel areas on the al-Wafideen crossing on Friday.

Rebels deny stopping anyone leaving and say people have not crossed into government territory for fear of persecution.

The terror of the bombardment and the increasingly unbearable living conditions may push people to brave the fighting and flee, according to one resident of Douma.

“I don’t want to leave, but I don’t want any harm to happen to my family,” said Abu Ahmad al-Ghoutani, who said he has two children.

State media have reported people in eastern Ghouta raising Syrian government flags and holding small protests in support of Assad. The Observatory has reported protests in one village to demand an end to the bombardment and the departure of rebels.

Tens of thousands of people have fled further into the enclave in the face of the warfare, a U.N. official said on Thursday, and residents of Douma said shelters are crowded with the new arrivals.

(Reporting by Ellen Francis, Dahlia Nehme and Yara Abi Nader in Beirut, Kinda Makieh in Damascus and Stephanie Nebehay in Geneva; writing by Angus McDowall; editing by Mark Heinrich)