Tag Archives: Aleppo

Russian truce plan fails to halt bombing of Syria’s Ghouta

FILE PHOTO: A man inspects a damaged house in the besieged town of Douma in eastern Ghouta in Damascus, Syria, February 22, 2018. REUTERS/Bassam Khabieh

By Angus McDowall and Stephanie Nebehay

BEIRUT/GENEVA (Reuters) – A Russian call for a five-hour truce on Tuesday failed to halt one of the most devastating campaigns of the Syrian war, where residents said government warplanes resumed striking the eastern Ghouta region on Tuesday after a brief lull.

Moscow and Damascus blamed rebels for the collapse of the truce, saying fighters had shelled a safe route intended for civilians to leave the enclave. The insurgents denied such shelling.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Moscow would press on with a plan to stage similar daily pauses in the fighting, allowing aid to be delivered to eastern Ghouta through what Russia describes as a humanitarian corridor.

The United Nations said it was proving impossible to aid civilians or evacuate the wounded, and said all sides must instead abide by a full 30-day ceasefire demanded by the U.N. Security Council.

“We have reports this morning there is continuous fighting in eastern Ghouta,” U.N. humanitarian spokesman Jens Laerke said. “Clearly the situation on the ground is not such that convoys can go in or medical evacuations can go out.”

Hundreds of people have died during 10 days of government bombardment of the eastern Ghouta, an area of towns and farms on the outskirts of Damascus. The assault has been among the most devastating air campaigns of a war now entering its eighth year.

With its Ghouta offensive, the Syrian government of President Bashar al-Assad is drawing on the military methods it has used to crush its opponents in other parts of Syria, including eastern Aleppo in late 2016.

Intensifying bombardment of the besieged area has been coupled with probing ground assaults to test rebel defenses.

With no sign of decisive international pressure to stop the attack, eastern Ghouta seems likely to meet the same fate as other areas won back by the government, where humanitarian corridors eventually became escape routes for defeated rebels.

“A concrete humanitarian corridor has been set up that will be used to deliver humanitarian aid, and, in the other direction, a medical evacuation can take place and all civilians who want to leave can,” Lavrov told a joint news conference in Moscow after meeting French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian.

ESCALATION

Residents in several towns in the eastern Ghouta described a brief pause in fighting, but said bombardment swiftly resumed. In the town of Hammouriyeh a man who identified himself by his first name Mahmoud told Reuters helicopters and warplanes were in the sky and conducting strikes.

Siraj Mahmoud, a spokesman for the Civil Defence rescue service, which is funded by Western governments and operates in rebel areas, said artillery and air strikes had hit the region.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitoring group said helicopters and warplanes had struck four towns and artillery shelling killed one person.

A U.N. Security Council resolution passed on Saturday called for a 30-day ceasefire across the entire country, but did not specify when it should start. It excludes some militant groups which are among the rebels in eastern Ghouta.

That has meant the ceasefire has not been observed in practice. U.N. spokesman Laerke declined to comment on the Russian proposal for a five-hour truce, but called instead on all sides to obey the full 30-day ceasefire.

“It is a question life and death – if ever there was a question of life and death – we need a 30-day cessation of hostilities in Syria as the Security Council demands,” Laerke, spokesman of the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Assistance (OCHA), told a Geneva briefing.

A rebel spokesman said people in eastern Ghouta did not want to leave the area despite the bombardment, because they feared arrest, torture or conscription by the government. Russia said it would guarantee the safety of any civilians who left.

Eastern Ghouta, where the U.N. says around 400,000 people live, is a major target for Assad, whose forces have clawed back numerous areas with military backing from Russia and Iran.

Rebels based in eastern Ghouta have intensified shelling of government-held Damascus. A medical official in the capital said on Monday 36 people had been killed in four days. Syrian state media reported eight people injured by rebel shelling on Tuesday. Damascus and Moscow say the campaign in eastern Ghouta is needed to halt such shelling.

Even before the latest bombardment of the besieged area began, there was growing international alarm over humanitarian conditions in the eastern Ghouta because of shortages of food, medicine and other essentials.

The multi-sided Syrian war has killed hundreds of thousands of people and driven half of the pre-war population of 23 million from their homes. Fighting has escalated on several fronts this year, with the collapse of Islamic State giving rise to conflict between other Syrian and foreign parties.

As Assad has pressed the offensive against eastern Ghouta, Turkey has launched an incursion against Kurdish fighters in the northwestern Afrin region. Tensions have also flared between Iran and Israel, alarmed by Tehran’s influence in Syria. Syrian air defenses shot down an Israeli F-16 earlier this month as it returned from a bombing raid on Iran-backed positions in Syria.

(Reporting by Stephanie Nebehay, Tom Perry, Ellen Francis, Dahlia Nehme and Angus McDowall; Editing by Peter Graff)

France says powers must impose transition on Syrians, no role for Assad

French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian attends a conference of Italian ambassadors in Rome, Italy July 24, 2017.

By John Irish

PARIS (Reuters) – France’s foreign minister said on Friday he wanted major powers to agree on a transition plan that would be imposed on Syrians, but ruled out any role for President Bashar al-Assad, who he said had “murdered” part of his population.

Jean-Yves Le Drian’s comments come despite what has appeared to be a softening in Paris’ position since the arrival of President Emmanuel Macron.

Macron’s election victory gave Paris, which is a key backer of the Syrian opposition and the second-largest contributor to the U.S.-led coalition fighting Islamic State, a chance to re-examine its Syria policy.

Macron proposed dropping demands Assad step down as a pre-condition for talks, although French officials still insist he cannot be the long-term future for Syria.

Le Drian, defence minister under former president Francois Hollande, said the anticipated defeat of Islamic State militants meant there was an opportunity for a compromise. More than 300,000 people have died in six years of fighting and millions more have fled Syria.

“He (Assad) cannot be part of the solution. The solution is to find with all the actors a calendar with a political transition that will enable a new constitution and elections,” Le Drian told RTL radio.

“This transition cannot be done with Bashar al-Assad who murdered part of his population and who has led millions of Syrians to leave” their homeland, he said.

Critics accused the Hollande administration of intransigence over Assad’s future, although it later said Assad would have to leave only once a transition process was complete.

 

CONTACT GROUP

That position has put France at odds with Russia and Iran, who back Assad and say the Syrian people should decide their own future.

While Britain has said Assad must go, diplomats say the administration of U.S. President Donald Trump has yet to outline a vision for a political process in Syria and is focusing primarily on defeating Islamic State and countering Iran.

Syria's President Bashar al-Assad speaks during an interview with AFP news agency in Damascus, Syria in this handout picture provided by SANA on April 13, 2017.

FILE PHOTO: Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad speaks during an interview with AFP news agency in Damascus, Syria in this handout picture provided by SANA on April 13, 2017. SANA/Handout via REUTERS

The U.N. Security Council has already adopted a Syria transition roadmap and two diplomats said the latest French idea was to get the five permanent members of the council – Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States – to agree first how to move forward.

The Security Council would then bring into fold the main regional powers, although diplomats said it was pointless without Iran’s involvement. There were also questions on how to win U.S. support given the Trump administration’s staunch anti-Iranian position.

“That’s what we want to do now even before Assad leaves. We do that independently because if we wait for the Syrians to agree we will wait a long time and there will be thousands more dead,” Le Drian said.

Macron has said the initiative would begin to see light during the U.N. General Assembly in mid-September.

Le Drian has previously said the contact group would aim to help U.N.-brokered peace talks in Geneva. They have stalled in large part due to the weakness of opposition groups and the Assad government’s refusal to enter substantive negotiations, given its strong position on the ground.

The last major international attempt to resolve the crisis ended in failure when the International Syria Support Group, which included Iran, was disbanded after Syrian government forces retook the rebel stronghold of Aleppo in 2015.

 

(Reporting by John Irish; Editing by Jon Boyle)

 

Aleppo district shows Assad’s delicate dance with Kurds

A woman walks on debris of damaged buildings in Aleppo's Sheikh Maqsoud neighbourhood, Syria July 15, 2017. Picture taken July 15, 2017. REUTERS/Omar Sanadiki

By Angus McDowall

ALEPPO, Syria (Reuters) – Kurdish fighters wearing the blue eagle insignia of the Asayish security force stopped the taxi entering the Sheikh Maqsoud district in Aleppo, checking papers and searching for contraband.

When they waved it on into the Kurdish-controlled district, it stayed inside the city while leaving, in effect, the Syrian Arab Republic of President Bashar al-Assad.

Inside Sheikh Maqsoud, Kurdish banners flutter from the rooftops and Assad’s image is replaced by that of a Kurdish leader.

“We won’t give up Sheikh Maqsoud unless they kill us all,” said Souad Hassan, a senior Kurdish politician.

That the government tolerates Kurdish rule in the enclave, generally allowing movement in and out, shows its willingness to accept, for now, a Kurdish movement whose vision for Syria directly rivals its own, but which is not an immediate enemy.

But friction between Sheikh Maqsoud – population 40,000 – and the government points to potential future problems.

It is an uneasy relationship, complicated by a web of international alliances and enmities, that will grow more important as both sides seize more ground from Islamic State.

Assad’s government trumpeted the defeat of rebels in Aleppo as his greatest victory of the war so far, the return of state control to a city that was once the country’s biggest.

But he has made no move to regain Sheikh Maqsoud, which sits on a hilltop surrounded by areas held by the army.

There is no military presence around the district except a Syrian army checkpoint on the road in. Many government workers and students inside Sheikh Maqsoud commute daily into the city.

Still, Asayish leaders there complained to Reuters that government checkpoints hinder the movement of goods and services into Sheikh Maqsoud.

LEFTIST IDEOLOGY

In an upstairs room of the local “Democratic Community Academy”, 15 men and women, note pads and pens on their laps, attended a lecture on the YPG’s leftist, federalist ideology.

A woman rose to speak and the man and woman giving the course nodded approvingly before correcting a point of doctrine.

A wall-sized photograph of Abdullah Ocalan, founder of the PKK in Turkey, and political lodestar of the YPG and the main Syrian Kurdish political party, the PYD, dominated the room.

Graffiti in Sheikh Maqsoud included several references to the PKK and to “Apo”, as Ocalan is known. Street posters of martyrs included not just those killed with the YPG in Syria, but some who had died fighting for the PKK in Turkey.

Those ties to the PKK alarm Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan, whose intervention in Syria is based partly on stopping a Kurdish mini-state emerging along the border.

They have also complicated the YPG’s relationship with the United States, which backs it as the spearhead of its fight against Islamic State in Syria, but which regards the PKK as a terrorist organization.

The Kurds have forsworn independence from Syria. Instead they want a decentralized state in which communities elect local councils, led by both men and women, with representation from all ethnic and religious groups.

Critics say the governing structures they have set up under this model in northern Syria are less democratic than they appear, and are dominated by officials committed to the PKK.

Still, their vision is at odds with Assad’s Syrian state, which is highly centralized and emphasizes the country’s Arab roots.

Syrian Foreign Minister Walid al-Moualem has suggested that an “accommodation” could be reached with the Kurds, and Assad has indicated he accepts their bearing arms for now.

But Assad has also vowed to take back “every inch” of the country and described Kurdish governing bodies as “temporary structures”.

FIGHTING

One reason for Assad’s tolerance of the YPG is clear: its enmity with rebel groups that are his own main foe.

The Kurds’ front against the rebels helped Assad when his forces retook east Aleppo last year. Their fight against Islamic State has also deprived the jihadists of resources they might have used against the Syrian government.

The Syrian government has also benefited from Turkish anxiety about the YPG’s links to the PKK. Ankara’s involvement in Syria, where it was a main supporter of rebels, is now focused on containing Kurdish influence.

The Kurds have allowed government enclaves to persist near Hasaka and Qamishli, two cities they control in northeast Syria, but they have also clashed with the army there.

Reuters visited Sheikh Maqsoud with a Syrian government official and was escorted by a truck of Asayish soldiers.

Mohammed Ali, the head of the Asayish in Sheikh Maqsoud, was very critical of the Syrian government, saying it often obstructed passage between Sheikh Maqsoud and other areas, blocking humanitarian supplies.

“This is wrong behavior by the Syrian government. It looks at Sheikh Maqsoud as if it is a military area, not a civilian one,” he said.

Reuters did not see any of the Kurdish YPG militia fighters in Sheikh Maqsoud, only the armed security service the Asayish, although YPG flags were flying.

CHECKPOINTS

There are only two primary schools and no high schools in Sheikh Maqsoud, Ali said. Older children and people in the district with jobs in other parts of Aleppo must commute into government territory.

However, he said the checkpoint was only open from 8am-5pm in summer and until 3pm in winter. Reuters saw some traffic cross later than this.

All supplies including food, medicine and diesel for electricity generators – needed to power pumps to raise water from wells – come from outside.

Produce in Sheikh Maqsoud street stalls was all purchased from the central Aleppo fruit and vegetable market each morning, the barrow men said – but charged 50 lira ($0.10) per kilo by the checkpoint soldiers.

Sheikh Maqsoud is about 17km (10 miles) from the nearest Kurdish-run territory in Syria – Afrin. Civilians are able to pass without much difficulty, but Kurdish fighters are not. Young men risk forcible conscription at army checkpoints.

The checkpoints sometimes refused shipments attempting to enter Sheikh Maqsoud without warning and seemingly without reason, Ali said, noting a recent diesel shipment denied entry.

Heavy trucks and construction machinery, such as bulldozers, required to lift the rubble in badly damaged areas were also forbidden entrance, he added.

DEPENDENCE

In the main ward of Sheikh Maqsoud’s only clinic, a former school, a motionless soldier and an old man lay on two of the four chipped metal beds.

A plastic cupboard against one wall was untidily piled with old medical equipment and supplies. A half-full plastic bin bag lay open in a corner with discarded surgical gloves inside.

The hospital cannot perform surgery under anesthetic and usually just provides first aid before moving patients to private hospitals in government-held Aleppo.

This apparent dependence on links to government areas is reflected in other Kurdish areas in Syria, where their other borders, with Turkey and Iraq, are hostile.

There was no sign in Sheikh Maqsoud of the ties between the YPG and the U.S. But Reuters saw a Russian armored vehicle slowly driving down one road.

Moscow is Assad’s biggest ally in the war but the presence of Russian forces in the Kurdish Afrin region has also helped avert possible Turkish attacks there, Kurds believe.

Still, Kurdish leaders in Sheikh Maqsoud say they see no reason to accept rule by Damascus unless their people want it.

“Around 30-40 percent of Syrian land is under our control and the will of the people is what is strongest,” said Mohammed Haj Mustafa, head of the PYD in Sheikh Maqsoud.

(Editing by Giles Elgood)

In Syria, a bus ride shows shifting map of war

Passengers wait in Qamishli city in Syria's Kurdish-held northeast to embark on a bus headed for government-controlled Aleppo, Syria May 7, 2017. REUTERS/Rodi Said

By Rodi Said

QAMISHLI, Syria (Reuters) – A new bus service linking Syria’s Kurdish-controlled northeast with the government-held west, unthinkable before Islamic State was driven from the area, is raising hopes of renewed commerce between two long-estranged parts of a fractured country.

Kurdish-led authorities hope the new corridor will end the economic isolation of their region, bordered as it is by hostile parties. For Damascus, the corridor holds out the prospect of sourcing fuel and food from the resource-rich northeast.

The service from Kurdish-controlled Qamishli to Aleppo city goes through territory captured from Islamic State (IS) by Russian-backed Syrian government forces in February. Until then, only an intrepid few would make a journey that entailed crossing through areas held by Islamic State and competing rebel groups.

“Before, there were no passengers, very, very few, because of the security conditions,” said Ahmad Abou Abboud, the head of Qamishli office of the bus company that started the service in late April.

Demand has risen steadily since the first busses – sleek, white, air-conditioned coaches with purple curtains – went into operation. Weekly trips have increased from two to three, Abboud told Reuters in Qamishli.

A Kurdish official said so far the road was being used only for travel, not trade.

The new bus service is the result of one of the most important shifts in the map of the Syrian conflict in recent times, with the areas controlled by government forces and Kurdish-allied militias being linked up near the city of Manbij.

HISTORIC ENMITY

It points to the highly nuanced state of relations between the Damascus government of President Bashar al-Assad and the Kurdish authorities that have established control over wide areas of the north since war began in 2011.

Despite historic enmity, Syria’s Kurds and government have seldom clashed. They have also found themselves fighting the same adversaries in the civil war in areas where their military interests have converged, including Turkey-backed rebel groups.

Its critics say the main Kurdish militia, the YPG, has cooperated with government forces. The YPG denies this.

The newly opened route passes west from Qamishli through a swathe of territory held by the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), an alliance of militias dominated by the Kurdish YPG. Much of the SDF-held territory was captured from Islamic State with support from the U.S.-led coalition.

The SDF-held region meets areas held by the Syrian government and its allies to the south of Manbij.

“We heard about this route in the media, after that we knew it was opened,” Abou Abboud said. “We were in contact with the relevant parties, and we have contacts with all parties – the regime and the autonomous administration.

“The two sides facilitated it.”

Abdul Karim Saroukhan, head of the Kurdish-led administration in northeastern Syria, said the bus route was a private initiative, and not sponsored by the government he runs from the city of Amuda 30 km (20 miles) from Qamishli.

Speaking to Reuters, he said the route had yet to be used for commerce. In a Reuters interview in March, Saroukhan expressed hope the route would end the economic “siege” imposed on his region, which is bordered to the north by Turkey and to the east by the Iraqi Kurdish administration – both of which are hostile to the nascent Kurdish government in northern Syria.

Syrian government officials could not be reached for comment. An official in Damascus however said the bus service was a positive thing and suggested it had government approval.

“Any move that helps geographic contact between Syrian regions with the knowledge of the Syrian state is viewed as a helpful, good thing, and helps to restore life to normalcy,” said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

Both sides have recently hinted they could be ready to reach a political accommodation. The Kurdish YPG militia has said it would have “no problem” with the government once Kurdish rights were secured, and the Syrian foreign minister has expressed confidence an “understanding” could be reached.

The YPG has allowed the Syrian government to maintain control over pockets of territory in the northeast, including Qamishli airport from which flights go to Damascus.

The government has meanwhile allowed the YPG to maintain control of a Kurdish neighborhood of Aleppo city.

Suspicion lingers however as the sides promote conflicting visions for Syria’s future. The Kurdish groups and their allies in the north want to preserve their autonomy in any peace deal, and promote a federal model for Syria.

Assad, who controls swathes of western Syria, has repeatedly said he wants to bring all the country back under government rule, and last year dismissed the local governance created in Kurdish areas as “temporary structures”.

(Writing/additional reporting by Angus McDowall and Tom Perry in Beirut; editing by Ralph Boulton)

U.N. has ‘a million questions’ on Syria after Astana deal

United Nations Special Envoy for Syria Staffan de Mistura attends a news conference at the European headquarters of the U.N. in Geneva, Switzerland May 11 2017. REUTERS/Denis Balibouse

GENEVA (Reuters) – The United Nations still has a million questions about a Syria deal struck last week by Russia, Turkey and Iran, with aid convoys almost totally stalled despite a reported reduction in the fighting, a U.N. aid official said on Thursday.

“Russia and Turkey and Iran explained to us today and yesterday … that they will work very openly, proactively, with United Nations and humanitarian partners to implement this agreement,” U.N. Syria humanitarian adviser Jan Egeland told reporters.

“We do have a million questions and concerns but I think we don’t have the luxury that some have, of this distant cynicism, and saying it will fail. We need this to succeed.”

The three-country deal on de-escalation zones was signed last week in the Kazakh capital Astana, with a goal of resolving operational issues, such as how to police the zones, within two weeks and of mapping them out by June 4.

U.N. Syria envoy Staffan de Mistura said he was convening what he called “rather business-like, rather short” peace talks in Geneva from May 16-19 to take advantage of the momentum. The political weight of the signatories and the staggered timing of the deal gave it a strong chance of working.

The alternative would be “another 10 Aleppos”, he said, referring to Syria’s second city which fell to forces loyal to President Bashar al-Assad in December after years of fighting.

A key aspect of the Astana deal was that it was an “interim” arrangement to address urgent issues, not a permanent partition of Syria, he said.

De Mistura said the Astana talks had also made rapid progress on agreements covering prisoner releases and de-mining, and both were almost complete.

Egeland said he could point to one concrete result from Astana: the reported reduction in fighting and aerial attacks. But aid convoys were only being allowed in at the rate of one per week, with no permission letters coming from the government.

Although some recent local surrenders meant the number of people who were hard to reach with aid had fallen by 10 percent to 4.5 million, a further 625,000 were besieged – 80 percent of them by forces loyal to Assad, he said.

(Reporting by Tom Miles and Stephanie Nebehay)

If London were Aleppo – Buckingham Palace destroyed, 4.3 million dead or displaced

People view sunrise in London, Britain, January 13, 2017. REUTERS/Toby Melville

BERLIN (Reuters) – The bullet-riddled, bombed-out buildings of Aleppo may bear little resemblance to London’s gleaming skyscrapers but the two cities once had much in common, something German artist Hans Hack has seized on to bring home the reality of war.

Before Syria’s six-year civil war, Aleppo — like London — was its country’s biggest city, as well as a key commercial hub. But, unlike teeming London, half of Aleppo is now effectively a ghost town.

To bring the suffering home to those in Europe, data visualizer Hack has used United Nations satellite data of Aleppo’s destruction and created equivalent maps of London and Berlin.

“For me it’s hard to understand in the news what it means, how strongly Aleppo was destroyed. I wanted to take this information and project it onto something I know personally that I can have some reference to. So I chose Berlin and London,” hack told Reuters.

London suffered the same damage as Aleppo, entire neighborhoods would be wiped off the map — in this alternative reality, Buckingham Palace, the Olympic stadium and the tower of London are all rubble.

It’s an echo of what happened in Aleppo. When the Syrian army captured the city from rebels in December 2016, the area was in ruins.

What the map doesn’t show are the human casualties. Since Syria’s civil war began the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights estimates that Aleppo’s population fell from 2 million to 1.3 million just after people started returning to the city.

A drop of similar proportions in London would see about 4.3 million people killed or displaced.

Feras al-Shehabi, chairman of the Aleppo Chamber of Industry, told Reuters in February that his city’s situation was “very similar to Berlin in 1946 or Tokyo in 1946. So you have a destroyed city.”

Still, Hack is reluctant to compare modern-day Aleppo with the cities ravaged in World War Two.

“I’m reluctant to draw parallels with history because I don’t think you can directly compare the way people have suffered. But I can imagine those who remember what it was like then (World War Two) don’t need a map like this,” he said.

(Reporting by Sreerk Heinz, writing by Rosanna Philpott in London Editing by Jeremy Gaunt)

Evacuations of besieged Syrians resume after two-day halt

A convoy of buses carrying evacuees from the two Shi'ite villages of al-Foua and Kefraya arrive to government-controlled Aleppo, in this handout picture provided by SANA on April 12, 2017. SANA/Handout via REUTERS

BEIRUT (Reuters) – The evacuation of Syrian civilians and fighters from four besieged towns, part of a swap deal between the warring sides, resumed on Friday after a 48-hour halt, state media and a war monitoring group said.

More than 35 busloads of civilians and pro-government fighters from the towns of al-Foua and Kefraya in Idlib province arrived in Aleppo city, which is under government control, the war monitor said.

Thousands of evacuees from the two rebel-besieged Shi’ite towns had been stuck at a staging area outside Aleppo, where a bomb attack on an evacuation convoy killed scores of people last week.

In exchange, ten buses carrying rebels and their relatives from Zabadani left a second nearby transit point to cross into rebel territory, state-owned Ikhbariyah channel said.

The towns of Zabadani and Madaya, which had long been under siege by pro-government forces near Damascus, came under state rule this week after Sunni rebels and civilians were evacuated.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the 48-hour suspension was due to rebel demands for the government to free 750 prisoners as part of the agreement.

The Britain-based war monitor said it remained unclear if authorities had released any prisoners as the reciprocal evacuations resumed in the morning.

On Saturday, a bomb blast hit a convoy carrying evacuees from al-Foua and Kefraya killing at least 126 people, including more than 60 children, who were waiting on Aleppo’s outskirts.

Thousands of Syrians have been evacuated mostly out of besieged rebel areas in recent months, under deals between President Bashar al-Assad’s government and rebel groups fighting for six years to unseat him.

U.N. Syria humanitarian adviser Jan Egeland said that there had been more evacuation deals this year than in previous years, but that they appeared driven more by military priorities than humanitarian concerns.

“They seem to follow a military logic, they do not seem to put the civilians at the heart of the agreement,” he told reporters in Geneva on Thursday.

The United Nations was not involved in the evacuation of the four towns, Egeland said. He added it was misleading to consider them voluntary evacuations when the towns had been besieged for years.

“Besiegement should end by being lifted,” he said, “not by places being emptied from people.”

(Reporting by Ellen Francis in Beirut, additional reporting by Stephanie Nebehay in Geneva; editing by Richard Lough)

Bombing of Syrian bus convoy kills, wounds dozens outside Aleppo

A still image taken from a video uploaded on social media on April 15, 2017, shows burnt out buses on road, scattered debris lying nearby and injured people being tended to away from buses said to be in Aleppo, Syria. Social Media Website via Reuters TV

By John Davison

BEIRUT (Reuters) – A bomb blast hit a bus convoy waiting to cross into government-held Aleppo in Syria on Saturday, killing and wounding dozens of people evacuated from two Shi’ite villages the day before in a deal between warring sides.

The agreement had stalled, leaving thousands of people from both government-besieged and rebel-besieged areas stranded at two transit points on the city’s outskirts, before the explosion occurred.

Pro-Damascus media outlets said a suicide attacker detonated a car bomb and killed at least 22 people. The British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the death toll was at least 24.

Footage on state TV showed bodies lying next to charred buses with their windows blown out, and vehicles in flames.

The blast hit buses in the Rashidin area on Aleppo’s outskirts. The vehicles had been waiting since Friday to cross from rebel-held territory into the government-controlled city itself.

The convoy was carrying residents and pro-government fighters from the rebel-besieged Shi’ite villages of al-Foua and Kefraya in nearby Idlib province.

They had left under a deal where, in exchange, hundreds of Sunni insurgents and their families were granted safe passage from Madaya, a government-besieged town near Damascus.

But a delay in the agreement had left all those evacuated stuck at transit points on Aleppo’s outskirts since late on Friday.

Residents of al-Foua and Kefraya were waiting in the Rashidin area.

The rebels and residents of Madaya, near Damascus, were waiting at the government-held Ramousah bus garage, a few miles away. They were to be transported to the opposition stronghold of Idlib province.

People waiting in the Ramousah garage heard the blast, and said they feared revenge attacks by pro-government forces. They circulated a statement on social media imploring “international organizations” to intervene so the situation did not escalate.

The evacuation deal is one of several over recent months that has seen President Bashar al-Assad’s government take back control of areas long besieged by his forces and their allies.

The deals are unpopular with the Syrian opposition, who say they amount to forced displacement of Assad’s opponents from Syria’s main urban centers in the west of the country.

They are also causing demographic changes because those who are displaced are usually Sunni Muslims, like most of the opposition. Assad is from the minority Alawite sect and is supported by Shi’ite regional allies.

It was unclear who carried out Saturday’s bombing attack.

The exact reasons for the delay in completing the evacuation deal were also unclear.

The Observatory said the delay was caused by the fact that rebels from Zabadani, another town near Damascus included in the deal, had not yet been granted safe passage out.

‘FORCED DISPLACEMENT’

A pro-opposition activist said insurgents blamed the delay partly on the fact that a smaller number of pro-government fighters had left the Shi’ite villages than was agreed.

Earlier on Saturday, at the transit point where the buses from al-Foua and Kefraya were waiting, one resident said he was not yet sure where he would live.

“After Aleppo I’ll see what the rest of the group is doing, if there are any preparations. My house, land and belongings are all in al-Foua,” Mehdi Tahhan said.

A Madaya resident, speaking from the bus garage inside Aleppo, said people had been waiting there since late on Friday, and were not being allowed to leave.

“There’s no drinking water or food. The bus garage is small so there’s not much space to move around,” Ahmed, 24, said.

“We’re sad and angry about what has happened,” he said. Many people felt that they had been forced to leave,” he said.

“There was no other choice in the end – we were besieged inside a small area in Madaya.”

Other evacuation deals in recent months have included areas of Aleppo and a district in the city of Homs.

Syria’s population is mostly Sunni. Assad’s Alawite religious minority is often considered an offshoot of Shi’ite Islam.

He has been backed militarily by Russia, and by Shi’ite fighters from Iran and the Lebanese Hezbollah group in Syria’s six-year-old conflict.

Assad has the military advantage over rebels in the west thanks to Russia’s intervention in 2015, although the insurgents are still fighting back and have made gains in some areas.

(Editing by Andrew Bolton)

Syrian army takes more villages from militants in northwest Syria

Rebel fighters pose for a picture in a damaged neighbourhood in the northern Syrian town of al-Bab, Syria March 4, 2017. REUTERS/Khalil Ashawi

AMMAN (Reuters) – The Syrian army has expanded its control over former Islamic State-held villages in northwest Syria, gaining more territory as it pushes back the jihadists from more pockets in Aleppo province, state media said on Saturday.

The army has made steady progress in recent weeks in eastern Aleppo countryside where it now occupies more villages, state-owned Ikhbariyah quoted a military source as saying.

The army’s gains follow a push to the south and east of the city of al-Bab, which was captured by Turkey-backed rebels late last month.

Earlier, rebels said they had thwarted a large assault by the Syrian army and Iranian-backed rebels on their remaining strongholds in the western Aleppo countryside near Rashdeen.

By taking Islamic State territory south of al-Bab, the army is preventing any possible move by Turkey and the rebel groups it supports to expand southwards. It is also moving closer to regaining control of water supplies for Aleppo.

Islamic State’s holdings in northwest Syria have been whittled away over recent months by successive advances by three different, rival forces: Syrian Kurdish groups backed by the United States, the Turkey-backed rebels, and the army.

Islamic State’s loss of al-Bab after weeks of bitter street fighting marks the group’s effective departure from northwest Syria, once one of its most fearsome strongholds, and an area of importance because of its location on the Turkish border.

Steady advances since 2015 by the Syrian Democratic Forces -the Kurdish-led alliance of U.S.-led armed groups – had already pushed Islamic State from much of the frontier by the middle of last year and have since then threatened its stronghold in Raqqa.

Turkey’s entry into Syria’s civil war via the Euphrates Shield campaign in support of rebel groups fighting under the banner of the Free Syrian Army was intended both to push Islamic State from the border and to stop Kurdish expansion there.

(Reporting by Suleiman Al-Khalidi; Editing by Clelia Oziel)

Syria air force bombed convoy, U.N. says in Aleppo probe

Members of the civil defense rescue children after what activists said was an air strike by forces loyal to Syria's President Bashar al-Assad in al-Shaar neighborhood of Aleppo. REUTERS/Sultan Kitaz

By Stephanie Nebehay

GENEVA(Reuters) – Syrian government aircraft deliberately bombed and strafed a humanitarian convoy, killing 14 aid workers and halting relief operations, U.N. investigators said on Wednesday in a report identifying war crimes committed by both sides in Syria’s war.

Syrian and Russian forces conducted daily air strikes on rebel-held eastern Aleppo between July and its fall on December 22, killing hundreds and destroying hospitals, they said.

Orphanages, schools and homes were “all but obliterated”, panel chairman Paulo Pinheiro told a news conference.

Opposition groups shelled government-controlled western Aleppo, killing and injuring dozens, the report said. They prevented civilians from fleeing besieged eastern Aleppo, using them as human shields – a war crime.

“The scale of what happened in Aleppo is unprecedented in the Syrian conflict. Much of Aleppo, once Syria’s biggest city and its commercial and culture center and a UNESCO World Heritage site, has been reduced to rubble,” Pinheiro said.

He called for ensuring that “those responsible for this ruinous situation one day are brought to justice”.

His team was ready to share its confidential list of suspected war criminals on all sides with a new U.N. body on Syria being set up in Geneva to prepare criminal prosecutions.

“It cannot pass without having this step toward justice, because of the great numbers of victims,” panel member Carla del Ponte said.

“What we have seen here in Syria, I never saw that in Rwanda, or in former Yugoslavia, in the Balkans. It is really a big tragedy,” she added. “Unfortunately we have no tribunal.”

SATELLITE IMAGERY

Cluster munitions were “pervasively used” and air-dropped into densely populated areas, the report said, amounting to the war crime of indiscriminate attacks.

“We have established very clearly in the report that the Syrian air force is responsible for these attacks, we don’t have any evidence linking Russia to those attacks with forbidden chemical weapons,” Pinheiro said.

The investigators also did not attribute any specific war crime investigated to Russian forces but Pinheiro said they would to assign responsibility “if and when we can prove it”.

The U.N. Commission of Inquiry’s report – released as Syrian peace talks continue in Geneva – covers the July-December period and is based on 291 interviews with victims and witnesses, as well as analysis of forensic evidence and satellite imagery.

Syrian helicopters unleashed toxic chlorine bombs “throughout 2016” on Aleppo, a weapon that caused hundreds of civilian casualties there, it said.

At least 5,000 pro-government forces had encircled eastern Aleppo in a “surrender or starve” tactic. Thousands of civilians had to leave the city under an evacuation agreement between the warring parties that amounted to the war crime of forced displacements, it said.

“This represents – and we have said this in the past – a worrying pattern that has occurred in other areas of the country including Deraa and Moadamiya,” Pinheiro said.

The investigators accused the Syrian government of a “meticulously planned and ruthlessly carried out” air strike on a U.N. and Syrian Red Crescent convoy at Orum al-Kubra, in rural western Aleppo on Sept. 19 that killed 14 aid workers.

At the time, the Syrian army and Russia denied responsibility for the attack. A previous U.N. inquiry had been unable to determine who conducted the strike.

“By using air-delivered munitions with the knowledge that humanitarian workers were operating in the location, Syrian forces committed the war crimes of deliberately attacking humanitarian relief personnel, denial of humanitarian aid, and attacking civilians,” the report said.

(Reporting by Stephanie Nebehay; Editing by Alison Williams and Dominic Evans)