Report of shooting halts exodus in Aleppo

Syrian government buses carry civilians away from eastern Aleppo on Friday in an operation that was later halted after reports of shootings and apparent talks over evacuations from two nearby villages.
Syrian government buses carry civilians away from eastern Aleppo on Friday in an operation that was later halted after reports of shootings and apparent talks over evacuations from two nearby villages.

BEIRUT -- Diplomats sought to salvage the evacuation of eastern Aleppo after it stalled Friday as both sides in Syria's civil war hurled recriminations, even as thousands of people waited to be taken to safer ground.

photo

AP

Vitaly Churkin, Russia’s ambassador to the United Nations, said Friday that Russia was opposed to a French-drafted resolution to send independent monitors to oversee the evacuation of Aleppo, contending it would take weeks to deploy them.

The Aleppo evacuation was suspended after a report of shooting at a crossing point into the enclave. The Syrian government pulled out its buses that since Thursday had been ferrying out people from the ancient city that has suffered under intense bombardment, fierce battles and a prolonged siege.

"The carnage in Syria remains a gaping hole in the global conscience," said U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon. "Aleppo is now a synonym for hell."

The halt also appeared to be linked to a separate deal to remove thousands of people from the government-held Shiite villages of Foua and Kfarya that are under siege by the rebels. The Syrian government said those evacuations and the one in eastern Aleppo must be done simultaneously, but the rebels say there's no connection.

[TIMELIME: Key events in Aleppo since the start of Syria’s uprising ]

The foreign minister of Turkey, a main backer of the rebels, said he was talking to his counterpart in Iran, a top ally of the Syrian government, to try to resume the evacuation.

A closed emergency meeting of the U.N. Security Council was held on the crisis in Aleppo, discussing a French proposal to have independent monitors oversee the evacuation of civilians and fighters. The council meeting ended with diplomats saying they would convene again this weekend.

The cease-fire and evacuation marked the end of the rebels' most important stronghold in the 5-year-old civil war. The suspension demonstrated the fragility of the cease-fire deal, in which civilians and fighters in the few remaining blocks of the rebel enclave were to be taken to opposition-held territory nearby.

In announcing the suspension, Syrian state TV said rebels were trying to smuggle out captives who had been seized in the enclave after battles with troops supporting President Bashar Assad.

Several opposition activists said Syrian troops shot and killed four people in one bus, but the shootings could not be independently confirmed.

The Lebanon-based pan-Arab Al-Mayadeen TV broadcast images of the government buses apparently returning evacuees to eastern Aleppo after the road was closed.

Al-Manar TV, the media arm of the Lebanon's Hezbollah militant group that supports Assad, said Syrian government supporters had closed the road used by evacuees from Aleppo, demanding the wounded from Foua and Kfarya be allowed to leave.

Syrian state media outlets said rebels shelled a road that was supposed to be used by people leaving the villages. But the opposition's Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said Hezbollah fighters backed by Assad ally Iran had cut the road to protest a lack of progress in the evacuations.

Buses that arrived at a collection point in the Hama countryside to pick up evacuees from the villages waited for hours to no avail.

'it was terrifying'

Meanwhile, the spokesman for the rebel faction Ahrar al-Sham claimed that Shiite militiamen allied with the Syrian government had detained civilians trying to flee Aleppo. The move could be an attempt to force rebels to allow safe passage for people in nearby Shiite villages who support Assad.

"Sectarian militias disrupted the evacuation of civilians in Aleppo, civilians mostly women & children were taken hostages by these militias," wrote the spokesman, Ahmed Kara Ali, in a Twitter message.

Other rebels and pro-opposition activists said government forces prevented buses from leaving eastern Aleppo, killing several people and detaining many others. The claims could not be independently verified.

Yaser Kor, an Aleppo council member, said he left in a private vehicle, a Hyundai, as part of a convoy Friday morning that included both civilians and rebels.

"It was horrible. It took us more than eight hours to leave. We got to the gathering point at midnight last night and we only made out after eight hours after holdups by the regime. It was terrifying," he said after arriving in the rebel-controlled province of Idlib.

Reports differed on how many people remain in the Aleppo enclave, ranging from 15,000 to 40,000 civilians, along with an estimated 6,000 fighters.

There also were contradictory reports on the number of evacuees. Syrian state TV put it at more than 9,000; the Syrian state news agency said 8,079 opposition fighters and their families have left; and Russia, a key Assad ally, said more than 9,500 people, including more than 4,500 rebels, were taken out. Those figures could not be independently verified.

Russia's Defense Ministry signaled that the pullout was over and suggested military operations were resuming.

"All women and children in areas controlled by rebel fighters have been taken out," the Russian statement read, adding that "evacuees on the last convoy" said that "all those who wished to had left the eastern neighborhoods of Aleppo."

Lina Shamy, an activist still holed up in eastern Aleppo, posted a Twitter message saying that "thousands of civilians [and] a lot of injured" are still in the districts.

More than 2,700 children have been evacuated in the past 24 hours, including the sick, wounded and those without their parents, UNICEF said. Hundreds of other vulnerable children, including orphans, remain trapped, it added.

"We are extremely concerned about their fate. If these children are not evacuated urgently, they could die," UNICEF said in a statement.

There are still "high numbers of women and infants, children under 5, that need to get out," added Elizabeth Hoff, Syrian representative for the World Health Organization, speaking by phone from western Aleppo. "Negotiations are ongoing" to keep the convoys moving, she added.

During Thursday night's evacuation, Pawel Krzysiek of the International Committee of the Red Cross said he could sense "fear, desperation [and] anxiety" among those waiting to escape.

The civilians -- including children and the elderly, the wounded and the sick -- were out in the cold, "burning the plastic, trying to get some sort of heat to warm themselves," said Krzysiek, who is still in Aleppo.

"It's the people leaving their house behind, their lives behind. It is very often they are facing impossible choices and this all occurs at the very individual level and it is difficult to compare with anything else," he said.

"This is what the people are going through with their families, their relatives. This is really something very personal for them. I have seen sadness. I have seen really sadness in the people eyes. Heartbreaking sadness, broken lives, heartbreaking stories," Krzysiek added.

Before the operation was suspended Friday, four convoys of ambulances and buses left Aleppo, Syrian state TV said, noting that some evacuees used their own vehicles.

monitors suggested

At the United Nations, U.S. Ambassador Samantha Power said she favors a French-drafted resolution calling for independent international monitors to oversee the evacuation. But Russian Ambassador Vitaly Churkin said "it takes weeks to deploy observers."

Power said the Security Council could vote this weekend on the resolution, but if there was a stalemate, an emergency special session of the General Assembly was possible. Churkin said Russia opposed that idea.

In a year-end news conference, President Barack Obama said he feels "responsible" for some of the suffering in Syria, but he defended his decision to avoid significant military action there.

He put the bulk of the blame on Russia, as well as Iran, for propping up Assad.

"This blood and these atrocities are on their hands," he said.

At the same time, Obama said that as the U.S. president, he felt a measure of personal responsibility for the suffering and deaths of innocent civilians in Syria and elsewhere.

"I've felt responsible when kids were being shot by snipers. I felt responsible when millions of people have been displaced," he said. "I feel responsible for murder and slaughter that's taken place in South Sudan that's not being reported on."

Critics of the president, including his successor, Donald Trump, have advocated greater U.S. involvement in the war. In a speech Thursday night in Hershey, Pa., Trump said he would establish safe zones within Syria paid for by neighboring Persian Gulf states.

"I will get the Gulf states to give us lots of money, and we'll build and help build safe zones in Syria, so people can have a chance," Trump said. "So they can have a chance."

Obama has dismissed the idea of safe zones, arguing that it would require a huge investment of U.S. forces and money and raise the risk of a military confrontation with Russia. Secretary of State John Kerry estimated earlier this year that establishing Syrian safe zones would require between 15,000 and 30,000 U.S. troops.

The president said Friday that he will continue to consult with Trump so that he can make a decision once he's sworn in. "Between now and then these are decisions I have to make," he said.

In Japan, Russian President Vladimir Putin announced a new peace initiative, saying he and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan were working to set up talks between Damascus and the opposition. Putin said they would take place in Astana, the capital of the Central Asian country of Kazakhstan.

Putin added that the Syrian military offensive in Aleppo was "unconditionally successful" and said the recapture of the city would overshadow the "symbolic" loss of the ancient city of Palmyra to the Islamic State last week.

Friday's remarks were Putin's first public reckoning with a surprise Islamic State offensive that retook Palmyra on Sunday.

Bassma Kodmani of the Higher Negotiating Committee, Syria's main opposition group, said her group supports the call for resumed peace talks but it wants them to take place under U.N. auspices and that it doesn't believe Astana was "the appropriate place."

Several rounds of U.N.-mediated indirect peace talks this year in Geneva were suspended with no progress.

Information for this article was contributed by Bassem Mroue, Vladimir Isachenkov, Jamey Keaten, Edith M. Lederer and Dave Bryan of The Associated Press; by Hugh Naylor, Andrew Roth, Brian Murphy and Zakaria Zakaria of The Washington Post; and by Justin Sink and Mike Dorning of Bloomberg News

A Section on 12/17/2016

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