50 people able to leave rebel area of Aleppo: medical official

PanARMENIAN.Net - Some 350 people were able to leave a rebel-held pocket of east Aleppo late Sunday, December 18, a medical official said, though evacuations have officially been postponed, AFP reports.

"Five buses carrying the evacuees arrived from besieged parts of east Aleppo," said Ahmad al-Dbis, who heads a team of doctors and volunteers coordinating evacuations to rebel-held Khan al-Assal, from where they can travel on to other parts of Aleppo and Idlib provinces.

"They were in a terrible state," Dbis told AFP.

"They hadn't eaten, they had nothing to drink, the children had caught colds, they were not even able to go to the toilet," he added.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the 350 were able to be evacuated after Russia and Turkey urged the Syrian regime to allow the convoy of buses to pass its final control point.

The evacuations from rebel-held areas of Aleppo had been suspended on Friday, a day after convoys of people had begun leaving the rebel sector under a deal allowing the regime to take full control of the battleground city.

The main obstacle to a resumption had been a dispute over how many people would be evacuated in parallel from two Shiite villages, Fuaa and Kafraya, under rebel siege in northwestern Syria.

But just as a deal to go ahead with the evacuations was found and announced by both sides, gunmen attacked buses sent to take people out of Fuaa and Kafraya and torched them, a monitor said.