Aleppo evacuation plan back on track, rebel officials confirm

PanARMENIAN.Net - Syrian opposition groups said an evacuation of rebel-held areas of Aleppo was back on track and expected to begin early on Thursday, December 15, but uncertainty persisted as a media outlet run by Lebanon's Hezbollah said truce talks faced "big complications," Reuters reports.

Such an exodus would end years of fighting for the city and mark a major victory for Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. An initial deal stalled on Wednesday, the planned evacuation failed to materialize and renewed fighting raged in the city.

Iran, one of Assad's main backers, had imposed new conditions, saying it wanted the simultaneous evacuation of wounded from two villages besieged by rebels, according to rebel and U.N. sources.

But rebel officials said late on Wednesday that they had agreed to an evacuation of the wounded from those Shi'ite villages in Idlib province, and that the Aleppo deal would now go ahead as planned.

"Within the coming hours its implementation will begin," said Abdul Salam Abdul Razak, a military spokesman for the Nour al-Din al Zinki rebel group.

An official with the Jabha Shamiya rebel group said implementation would begin around 6 a.m. (0400 GMT) on Thursday. He said around 1,000 wounded people would be the first to leave eastern Aleppo, and the entire evacuation should be complete within three days.

It was not immediately clear how a deal had been reached, and it was soon thrown in doubt by the military media unit run by Hezbollah, an armed Shi'ite group backed by Iran and an ally of the Damascus government.

"The negotiations are seeing big complications, in light of tension and operations on the front lines," it said.

The original ceasefire was brokered by Russia, Assad's most powerful ally, and opposition backer Turkey on Tuesday. But the planned evacuation of rebel-held areas did not happen and instead shelling and gunfire erupted in the city on Wednesday, with Turkey accusing government forces of breaking the truce. Syrian state television said rebel shelling killed six people.

The U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, Zeid Ra'ad al Hussein, said the bombardment by Syrian government forces and their allies "most likely constitutes war crimes".

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Russian leader Vladimir Putin agreed in a phone call earlier in the day to make a joint effort to start the process, Turkish presidential sources said.

Shortly before the new deal was announced, clashes raged in Aleppo.

Government forces made a new advance in Sukkari - one of just a handful of districts still held by rebels - and brought half of the neighborhood under their control, the Observatory said. Rebels saying they launched an attack against government forces using suicide car bombs.