The evacuation of civilians and rebels from besieged east Aleppo finally appeared to be starting this morning as ambulances of the Syrian Arab Red Crescent and buses were allowed through to pick up those queueing to escape.
The on-off deal for the surrender of the enclave was finally confirmed in the early hours of this morning after being held up for a day by Iranian objections.
There was a further blow as the revised time for the evacuation approached at 8am. Activists in the enclave said that a team from the White Helmets civil defence service and other volunteers were fired upon as they were clearing rubble to make way for evacuation buses.
Abu Taim, a doctor at the nearby clinic, told The Times that four people were being treated for serious injuries, although he denied an earlier report that a White Helmet or other civilian volunteer had been killed.
The shooting, which activists and rebel spokesmen said came from the direction of pro-regime checkpoints, immediately revived fears that the ceasefire to allow for the evacuation would collapse again.
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It was originally supposed to start, under terms agreed through the Russian and Turkish governments, at 5am local time yesterday. But the scores of green buses sent by the regime to pick up the evacuees were stopped from doing so by checkpoints apparently manned by Iraqi Shia militiamen under orders from Iran.
In the subsequent stand-off fighting recommenced, with the bombardment of the enclave claiming an unknown number of lives.
Ola Karman, one resident, had taken her two-year-old daughter and mother with her to board the buses after first visiting the grave of her brother, killed in the war, for what she thought would be a final farewell. Few of those leaving the city believe they will be ever able to return.
“After this crazy shelling and the executions against women and children by Assad forces, I decided to leave,” she said. Then she discovered the buses were turning round. “I realised that everybody had let us down and a massacre would be perpetrated against us,” she said.
Today, though, residents began lining up again after the Russians, Turks and Iranians conducted a day of frantic negotiations.
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Iranian demands — said by one rebel spokesman to resemble as Christmas present wish-list — were whittled down to an exchange of prisoners and the evacuation of the sick and injured from two Shia towns in northern Syria besieged by the rebels.
The International Committee of the Red Cross today said that it had staff with the local Red Crescent teams and they were moving to the agreed crossing points on the western edge of what remained of the rebel enclave, less than two square miles in total.
At 1pm local time (11am GMT) the buses started to take on passengers, reports said.
Yasser al-Yussef, spokesman for the Nur al-Din al-Zinki, said the first civilian evacuees had arrived in rebel territory to the west of Aleppo.
Other spokesmen said that no medical evacuees had arrived at clinics yet.
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If the evacuation is completed today or tomorrow as planned, it will mark the end of one of the bitterest battles for a major world city in recent decades.
When the rebels moved in from the surrounding countryside to the poorer, largely Sunni Muslim eastern half of the city in July 2012, they hailed it as a turning point in the war and the start of a long march on Damascus.
Instead they became trapped both literally, as the regime managed with Russian and Iranian support to impose a siege this summer, and politically. As Aleppo became a rallying point for jihadists from across the world, the opposition was divided by infighting and discredited by the abuses of the radical groups, mostly loyal to Islamic State or al-Qaeda.
Supporters of the regime in west Aleppo have been celebrating the imminent victory all week, as have the regime’s backers in Iran, which committed tens of thousands of its Shia militiamen from across the region to the battle and lost hundreds.
“The new American president must accept the reality that Iran is the leading power in the region,” Yahya Safavi, foreign policy adviser to the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, was quoted by Iranian media as saying, as he marked the recapture of the city.
