30000 flee east Aleppo, Russia proposing humanitarian corridors

Civilians carry water containers as they walk along a street in the rebel-held besieged Tariq al-Bab neighborhood of Aleppo, Syria November 23, 2016. The images are graphic and many may find them distressing.

For President Assad’s chief ally Russian Federation, the Syrian army advance is a liberation for trapped civilians.

More than 50,000 people have fled Aleppo’s rebel-held districts, the Observatory said on Wednesday, including at least 20,000 to government-held territory and another 30,000 to Kurdish-controlled districts.

“The future of Aleppo is in the hands of the Assad regime and Russia”, Rycroft said.

Zakaria Malahifji, the head of the political office of the Aleppo-based Fastaqim rebel group, told Reuters on Wednesday that rebel groups in the city had rejected any withdrawal. And they say people there won’t leave their homes because they’re afraid of the regime. The Observatory said the government was detaining and questioning displaced people who have fled towards northeastern parts of the city. He called on Russia, Syria and Iran, which supports Assad’s regime, to “change their policy”.

Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Mikhail Bogdanov told Russian news agencies Wednesday that Moscow was baffled by such comments. In the name of humanity let the civilians leave the city.

Syrian and global aid agencies operating in those areas meanwhile tried to mobilise resources to help civilians crossing the frontlines in search of safety.

United Nations envoy Staffan de Mistura said the Russian and Syrian governments have declined requests for a ceasefire to allow aid to get through and to allow for the emergency evacuation of 400 people desperate for medical treatment.

Observatory chief Rami Abdurrahman said he predicts death tolls will rise in east Aleppo as the internal displacement creates more residential density.

Many others have travelled south into the remaining territory held rebels.

Syrian rebels vowed to continue fighting against regime advances in east Aleppo that had imposed a brutal and catastrophic humanitarian disaster against rebel families over the last six months.

The effect has been no less devastating.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a British-based war monitor, said the weather impeded aerial bombardment of rebel-held areas on Thursday, but artillery shelling continued.

On Tuesday, at least 51 civilians were killed and scores injured in regime airstrikes on eastern Aleppo.

The government’s advance on the ground has been accompanied by heavy bombardment, with air strikes, barrel bomb attacks and artillery fire pounding rebel-held neighbourhoods.

At the heart of the deadlock is that Russian Federation and Syria consider all rebel groups in the country terrorist groups, while some of the very same rebels are considered moderate by the United States and have been armed and supported by Washington to fight ISIS.

But “up to 24 civilians who had been interspersed with combatants were inadvertently killed in a known (IS) staging area where no civilians had been seen in the 24 hours prior to the attack”, said the coalition.