TEMPO.CO, Ankara - Sick and injured civilians left a rebel enclave in Syria’s eastern Ghouta on Tuesday under the first medical evacuation since one of the deadliest assaults of the seven-year war began nearly a month ago.
In another sign of success in the government’s mission to retake all rebel-held territory near the capital, the army also evacuated hundreds of fighters and their families from a separate small rebel-held pocket south of Damascus.
In the north of the country, on another main front, Turkey’s military said it had encircled the town of Afrin, a big advance in its offensive against Kurdish fighters. Government forces also pounded a rebel-held area in the south for a second straight day, potentially reopening yet another front.
The developments show how the map of control in Syria has been changing in recent weeks, with Turkey and Russia both pressing their advantages since the self-proclaimed caliphate of the Islamic State jihadist group largely collapsed last year.
International attention has been focussed in recent weeks mainly on the plight of civilians in eastern Ghouta, where the United Nations believes 400,000 people have been trapped under punishing bombardment, deprived of food and medicine.
Women carrying infants, men hobbling on crutches and an old man in a wheelchair waited at a school near the al-Wafideen crossing, along with dozens who exited the enclave through it, a witness said.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights war monitor said more than 150 civilians left eastern Ghouta on Tuesday, as air strikes and shelling of the area continued.
During the army’s offensive, more than 1,100 civilians have died, the U.N. Office of Humanitarian Affairs says. President Bashar al-Assad, whose forces have recaptured most towns and cities in Syria’s heavily populated west, has vowed to reassert his control over every inch of the country.
The government assault on eastern Ghouta has become one of the bloodiest of the war, with rebels on course for their worst defeat since the battle of Aleppo in 2016. The U.N. Security Council has demanded a 30-day ceasefire, but Moscow and Damascus say it does not apply to banned terrorist groups in Ghouta.
They have offered to evacuate civilians and rebels who agree to withdraw from the area, but so far the main insurgent groups have said they intend to stay and fight to the end.
REUTERS
