Twenty-five buses enter Aleppo to evacuate trapped civilians and rebel fighters
REYHANLI, Turkey-Syria border—Twenty-five green buses which have now become a symbol for the evacuation process in Syria entered the rebel-held eastern Aleppo to evacuate thousands of the remaining fighters and their families on Sunday.
The evacuation is expected to resume after the rebel groups agreed to allow simultaneous evacuation of the injured and “humanitarian cases” from two government-held villages they currently besiege.
The number of the buses is expected to reach as many as 100, the official SANA news agency reported on Sunday.
The Syrian regime and the rebels, and their international backers, mainly Russia, Iran, and Turkey, were negotiating the terms of the new agreement for much of Friday and Saturday with the talks mainly focusing on the fate of the pro-regime Shiite villages of Foua and Kefraya, encircled by the armed opposition.
The new deal is also expected to allow a limited evacuation of people from these two villages.
Syrian state TV reported that five buses have also entered the two villages.
2,500 people from the two villages will be evacuated in return for the evacuation of the rebel fighters and their families in Aleppo, Idlib governor told Al-Manar, a satellite channel for the Lebanese Hezbollah militia fighting in the country in support of the Assad regime.
The governor added that another 1,500 people will be evacuated in a second stage from these two villages in return for the evacuation of 1,500 people in Madaya, a rebel-held town close to the capital Damascus.
Some 10,000 people were evacuated in several trips on Thursday and early Friday, the International Committee of the Red Cross stated on Saturday, which, along with its Syrian counterpart, are facilitating the evacuation. But the evacuation was put on hold midday on Friday, with both sides accusing each other of violating the terms.
One senior official from the powerful Ahrar al-Sham rebel group told AFP news agency on Saturday that they are working on simultaneous evacuations in Aleppo and two other places in Syria.
"There will be evacuations from Foua and Kefraya, as well as Madaya and Zabadani, and all the residents of Aleppo and the fighters will leave."
Al-Manar, a satellite channel for the Lebanese Hezbollah militia fighting in the country in support of the Assad regime, claimed that designated buses for the evacuation of "the humanitarian cases" were being prepared to enter the two villages of Foua and Kefraya Saturday night.
Rudaw has visited the Turkish border town of Reyhanli, 64 km west of Aleppo, where preparations are made to receive some of the evacuees.
Turkey has been a main backer of the evacuation agreement, with the country’s senior officials, including President Recep Tayyip Erdogan making marathon calls to regional and international actors, mainly Russia and Iran.
It was not initially clear whether the Russian-Turkish brokered agreement to evacuate "fighters and weapons" from Aleppo also included other areas in the country.
The head of the UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, Rami Abdulrahman, which monitors the civil war, said the Friday evacuation came to a halt because Iran and its allied Shiite militias insisted on including the two Shiite villages in the evacuations.
According to Abdulrahman there are some 20,000 people in the two Shiite villages currently besieged by Syrian rebel fighters.