Almost 50 orphans who made an impassioned video plea for rescue last week from besieged Aleppo have reached safety in a medical clinic in northern Syria under the protection of warplanes from the US-led coalition.
The Sunday Times has learnt that the children of the Moumayazoun underground orphanage left the rebel enclave in ambulances and buses in a Red Cross convoy on Thursday.
After a trip through Syrian government-controlled territory, they were transferred to the care of an independent network of doctors at the frontline town of Khan al-Assal and then north to the clinic close to the Turkish border.
Hamish de Bretton-Gordon, a former British Army officer who works with the medics, said the children were receiving treatment and getting meals for the first time in weeks. The clinic lies within the control zone patrolled by the warplanes of the coalition’s Operation Euphrates Shield.
“We’re hoping the children are finally safe from threat and they will now have sufficient protection from airstrikes,” he said. “They came out in shock but now are getting properly fed and coming round a bit.”
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As the conflict reached its zenith last week Asmar Halabi, the director of the orphanage, released the video of the cowering children — some as young as toddlers — crying out for help under the bombardment.
The 47 children, who lost their parents and homes in the fighting, lived two floors underground for protection from shells and missiles.
Surrounded by her “brothers and sisters” Yasmin Kanuz, 10, who has lived in the shelter for two years, spoke of their plight.
“We cannot go outside because of the airstrikes and shelling,” she said. “Please get us out of Aleppo. We want to live like everybody else.”
The children’s rescue was the subject of behind-the-scenes negotiations spearheaded by the Band Aid co-founder Sir Bob Geldof and Rory McCarthy, a London-based businessman.
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Exploiting contacts that ranged from the Kremlin to John Kerry, the US secretary of state, they organised a convoy of 26 vehicles that assembled on the edge of the enclave on December 10 to ferry away the children during a pause in the fighting.
But the agreement, under which 500 of Aleppo’s most vulnerable would have been rescued, fell apart and the fighting continued for a further five brutal days.
“To have it all in place, to have the real-time action being monitored, to have the guarantees in place and then it doesn’t [happen] is soul- destroying,” Geldof said.
David Nott, a leading British surgeon, plans to travel to northern Syria to treat the wounded orphans and others who have made it out of Aleppo.
Nott, who provided the list of children, said officials and international organisations had been paralysed by apathy in the last months of the seige.