Evacuation Underway in East Aleppo: A Ground Report

Once the last rebel-held enclave is emptied from its residents, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad will have full control of Aleppo, a big, strategic victory.

Spokesman Ingy Sedky said 750 people had been evacuated in parallel from Fuaa and Kafraya, two Shi’ite-majority villages in northwest Syria besieged by rebels, as part of the deal.

Using that access, he got close enough to shoot Karlov in the back, shouting “Allahu Akbar” and vowing to never forget Aleppo, where Russian Federation assists Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s butchery of Sunni civilians. Government and allied forces have used megaphones to call on any remaining rebels to clear the city. ISIS has responded with an intense wave of suicide bombings and attacks using vehicle-borne explosives, the Turkish military said in a statement.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which monitors the conflict through a network of activists on the ground, said 60 buses were waiting to leave.

It was unclear how many people – either fighters or civilians – remained. The fatality brings the total number of Turkish soldiers killed in Syria to 25.

Turkish aid organizations working out of Aleppo emphasize that while waiting for the evacuation process to begin – children especially have been strongly affected by harsh weather conditions.

The U.N. Security Council voted Monday to deploy worldwide observers to monitor the evacuation routes as well as check on those who were still in Aleppo. Some vehicles struggled to advance in a snow storm and sub-zero temperatures.

So far, about 30,000 people have left what was once a rebel stronghold.

Buses drove some of the last civilians and fighters out of east Aleppo, Syria, today as evacuations resumed after a tense delay.

Live footage from the Ramousseh crossing showed the nighttime evacuation Thursday.

The arrival of thousands of refugees from Aleppo in Idlib aroused fears that the rebel-held city in northwestern Syria could be Assad’s next target.

The foreign and defense ministers of Russia, Iran and Turkey met in Moscow on Tuesday and agreed to help broker a new peace deal for Syria.

Almost 25,000 people have left Aleppo for opposition-held areas in rural Aleppo and neighboring Idlib province in the past week, according to the Red Cross, while 750 have left Fua and Kefraya.

In western Aleppo, a bomb went off as scores of people were gathered to celebrate the return of Aleppo to government control as well as a Christmas tree-lighting event.

Tuesday’s talk signify the rising strength of Russia’s links with both Turkey and Iran despite the assassination of the Russian ambassador to Turkey in Ankara on Monday. United Nations spokesman Stephane Dujarric said negotiations about access for United Nations monitors were still underway with the different parties involved in the Syrian war, which is fast approaching its sixth year. It reported a bakery had been destroyed.

The injured were allowed into Turkey via the Cilvegozu Border Crossing.

For Syria’s opposition, Thursday’s events are nothing short of a catastrophe.

Isik says more than 1,000 IS militants have been killed in the Turkish-backed offensive, entitled Euphrates Shield.

In a meeting Thursday with a visiting Iranian delegation, Assad framed the victory as a defeat against terrorism and as a rebuke of the countries that support the rebels.

Iran and Russian Federation have been Assad’s strongest backers since the civil war began in March 2011.

The rebels took over eastern Aleppo in the summer of 2012, managing to stave off the better-equipped Syrian military. Karlov was shot dead on December 19, 2016 in Ankara’s Contemporary Art Centre. In a readout of Kerry’s call with Cavusoglu Tuesday, Kirby said that the secretary “offered US assistance to the investigation into the horrific murder of Russian Ambassador to Turkey Andrey Karlov”.

After all, the shooter, Mevlut Mert Altintas, was a member of Turkey’s police force. Those still in custody include Altintas’ roommate.