Syrian civilians begin leaving rebel-held parts of Aleppo

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s government and its Russian allies declared a joint humanitarian operation for the besieged area on Thursday, bombarding it with leaflets telling fighters to surrender and civilians to leave.

Dozens of families were reportedly among the evacuees who passed through the passage in the Salaheddin neighbourhood.

Some rebel forces had also surrendered to government forces, the report said.

A view shows what is believed to be the road that civilians would have to use to access one of the safe exit points opened for civilians wishing to leave rebel-held areas, in Aleppo’s Bustan al-Qasr, Syria July 29, 2016.

The civilians later boarded buses where they were taken to temporary shelters, state news agency Sana said.

“Understandably, many people are afraid to leave and cross into other places after living for years under the control of the rebels”, he said.

State television broadcast footage on Saturday showing civilians, mostly women and children, walking under the watch of government troops and boarding buses.

The British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights confirmed that people had left opposition zones but could not provide a figure.

Aleppo, Syria’s biggest city before the war, has been divided since 2012 into government and rebel sectors.

The Local Coordination Committees, a Syrian opposition monitoring group, denied that civilians and fighters were heading to government areas of the city.

“I’m very afraid that they will take my 17-year-old son and force him to sign up for military service where they’ll send him to the frontlines”, he told AFP.

“In addition to the existing corridors, we are organizing four more humanitarian corridors”, the general said.

Due to the lack of aid, worldwide agencies have warned that the residents risk starvation.

Reports of the departures came a day after UN special envoy for Syria, Staffan de Mistura, called on Russian Federation to leave the creation of humanitarian corridors around the city to the United Nations and its partners.

“How can you expect people to want to walk through a corridor, thousands of them, while there is shelling, bombing, fighting?”

Syrian opposition activists expressed deep skepticism over the government’s humanitarian corridors.

The Syrian opposition, however, said the corridors were a government ploy to recapture all of Aleppo, calling it a euphemism for forced displacement of the inhabitants, which it said would be a war crime.

“Be clear – these “corridors” are not for getting aid in, but driving people out”, Basma Kodmani, a member of the opposition High Negotiations Commission, said on Friday.

“The brutal message to our people is: ‘leave or starve'”.