Airstrikes resumed on civilians attempting to flee Aleppo’s embattled opposition enclave yesterday after Iran scuppered a ceasefire deal that was due to allow rebel fighters to withdraw.
Last night Russia and Turkey announced that the deal that handed the Assad regime its biggest victory in the six-year civil war was back on, raising the hopes of thousands of civilians who had earlier issued final appeals to be saved. The rebels said they had accepted the new ceasefire offer.
Among those appeals one was pitiful even by the standards of this war: Unicef had called for children trapped in an orphanage near the front line to be spared further terror. Yesterday, a video purporting to show some of the 47 children living there asking for help was posted online.
Earlier the world had been treated to another grim spectacle as green buses sent to pick up thousands of people at the crossing point from the enclave sat idling for hours, while those supposed to be boarding them were held back at checkpoints. The checkpoints were manned, activists in the city said, by members of an Iranian-backed Shia militia from Iraq.
After a stand-off of several hours the sound of shelling could be clearly heard on voice messages sent out by the activists, many of whom had earlier told of their hopes of a rescue and escape to Idlib province and then to Turkey.
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A statement by the Russian military blamed the rebels for starting the shooting but acknowledged that the combined Syrian-Russian attack had resumed.
Yasser al-Yussef, a spokesman for the Islamist rebel militia the Nur al-Din al-Zinki brigade, said: “The Iranian sectarian militias have been trying to scupper the deal and are not allowing civilians to leave after imposing new agendas and their own interests.”
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 a brother killed in the war for what she thought would be a final farewell. Few of those leaving the city believe they will be 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.
Although the deal had seemed to catch the regime unawares when it was announced, its emphatic backing by Russia, which has provided much of the air power for the regime’s assault on the city, provided reassurance. “Russia said yes, which means the regime said yes,” said one source close to the rebels’ negotiating team.
However, Tehran, which has recruited and trained the Assad regime’s most important auxiliary ground forces, had not been consulted. Rebels said it then imposed two extra demands — for prisoners believed to be from the Iraqi militia Harakat al-Nujaba to be handed over, and for two Shia villages under siege by rebels to the south of Aleppo to be added to the deal.
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Fua and Kefraya have hitherto been part of negotiations for the relief of two rebel-held towns in the south, Madaya and Zabadani.
There was no confirmation of that demand but a statement by Hezbollah, the Lebanese Shia militia that is also close to Iran and has been fighting for the Assad regime, said Damascus still had “demands” that needed to be met. The rebels acknowledged that under last night’s deal, those prisoners would be handed over.
A Lebanese television station regarded as close to Hezbollah said that the regime and its militias had been shocked by the numbers who wanted to make use of the escape route. It quoted military sources as saying that they had expected to transfer 2,000 rebel fighters to Idlib, but had been presented with a list of 15,000 people, mostly civilians but including 4,000 fighters.
Whatever the cause, the collapse of Tuesday’s deal sent waves of despair through the enclave, where activists who had been predicting their deaths had seen it as a salvation, albeit one that would mean them abandoning their homes.
“There are a lot of massacres, a lot of shells,” said Modar Shekho, an activist who earlier this month lost his brother and his father to the regime bombardment in separate strikes on the same day. “All the people now just want to leave the city to the safe places.”
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Monther Etaky, who on Monday said he feared execution but on Tuesday was making plans to leave Syria for Turkey, said: “We are afraid now, about any offensive or advance by the Assad regime. That would be a real disaster.”
Abu Jafar, the enclave’s coroner, issued an appeal for help. “The international community mocked us, Russia mocked us, Iran mocked us,” he said. “They have been bombing us since the early morning, even at the points where people were supposed to be evacuated. The injured are lying on the ground, the dead are also lying there, there are no cars or anything to save them and the shelling is continuing. There is no one to save them — we beg you, we beg you, we beg you.”
On Tuesday night President Erdogan of Turkey spoke by telephone to President Putin of Russia, and Mr Putin’s foreign minister Sergei Lavrov spoke to his Iranian counterpart, Mohammad Javad Zarif.
Mr Putin and Mr Erdogan agreed “to make a joint effort to start the evacuation of civilians and opposition forces from eastern Aleppo as soon as possible”, reports said. Leaders of Turkey, Iran and Russia will hold a summit in Moscow on December 27 to discuss Syria’s future, the Turkish foreign minister, Mevlut Cavusoglu, said.
The evacuation was due to begin this morning. Early reports indicated that buses were transporting the first citizens out from eastern Aleppo, although there were also reports of the convoy coming under fire.
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Reuters said that the convoy was hit by pro-Assad militias, while the Syrian Civil Defense group said one of the White Helmet volunteers was shot during preparations for the evacuation.
