The Syrian Observatory For Human Rights

Syrian families trickle out of Aleppo as residents choose between torture or starvation

Syrian families trickle out of Aleppo as residents choose between torture or starvation

 
Aleppo
An injured man is carried through the bombed neighbourhood of Al-Qatarji, Aleppo.CREDIT: AFP/GETTY

Dr Fatima Almouslem treated around five women suffering miscarriages each month before the Syrian regime cut off Aleppo and put the city under siege earlier this month. Now, her small clinic is treating 20 women a week.

“The women are losing babies after being injured in air strikes, but also from the stress of bombs nearby and because of the lack of any nutritional food,” she said.

“We are treating so many casualties now that we can only give them two hours of recovery time before they must leave to make room for another. There’s no time to grieve.”

Since government forces captured the last route out of Syria’s second city earlier this month, Dr Almouslem and the remaining 300,000 residents in the opposition-held eastern side have been trapped.

With nothing getting in or out, they have had to rely on basic supplies, which are beginning to run out. Residents told The Telegraph that they have eaten nothing but rice for weeks.

Bombs continue to pound the besieged city daily.

Aleppo
Syrians queue to buy bread in the besieged city of Aleppo CREDIT: AFP

The hospital where Dr Almouslem works, Omar bin Abdulaziz, was hit four times in 24 hours on Sunday.

“There is no doubt they are targeting hospitals deliberately,” said Dr Abdulkarim Ekzayez, a health programme manager at Save the Children, which runs several clinics in northern Syria. “Assad’s thinking is if you kill a doctor, you don’t just kill one person, you effectively kill the 10,000 people that rely on them.”

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Little has changed on the ground since the regime and its Russian allies announced on Thursday that they were opening humanitarian corridors for civilians and unarmed rebels.

On Saturday, dozens of civilians, mainly women and children, moved towards the government-held west, state media reported.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights also reported that “a number” of civilians had crossed into government territory.

But many residents have dismissed the offer of supposed safe passage, saying it presents them with an impossible choice between a slow death from starvation if they stay and possible arrest or torture if they attempt to leave.

All four of the corridors lead out to government-held areas.

The city, once the country’s main economic hub, has been divided into regime-controlled west and rebel-controlled east since 2012, when anti-Bashar al-Assad protests turned into an armed insurrection.

Aleppo
A street is barricaded in Aleppo’s Saif al-Dawla district CREDIT: REUTERS

Those still left in the east have stayed through four years of heavy bombardment and fierce fighting, many out of loyalty to the revolution.

“Almost no one has left since the amnesty was announced. Most people don’t want to abandon the uprising,” said Mohammad al-Zein, a lawyer living in Aleppo. “Some 100,000 here are directly connected to the opposition. Wives won’t leave their husbands and mothers their sons to an unknown fate.”

Umm Wassim Eissa, 40, a teacher from the Sayf al-Dawla neighbourhood, said she wanted to cross to the government side, but did not want to leave behind her 19-year-old son, who had refused military service and was wanted by the regime.

Dr Almouslem, one of only two obstetricians left in eastern Aleppo, is still turning up for work. She said she will be “one of the last ones left” in the city.

“I will stay. The so-called safe passages all lead to regime territory,” she said. “As a doctor they consider me to be supporting the opposition. They will put me in jail and then kill me if I leave.

“After everything they have done to us, I don’t believe the regime wants to help us. It’s only for show,” she told The Telegraph during her daily 20-minute break.

Aleppo
A Syrian woman shelters in a damaged building as civil defence workers search for survivors following air strikes in Aleppo’s rebel-held neighbourhood of Tariq al-Bab.

Such is the deep distrust that when government planes air-dropped small packages of aid containing nappies, tea and bread on Thursday, no one dared touch it for fear they would be poisoned.

But activists on the ground said even if people wanted to leave, the corridors appeared to still be closed. Footage taken by a local TV station on Friday of the designated Bustan al-Qasr crossing seemed to show a concrete barrier blocking the road, though it was not clear whether it had been erected by the rebels or the government.

The UK-based monitor Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said just 12 people are reported to have left safely through other passages since the offer was made.

Staffan de Mistura, United Nations Syria envoy, who had not been informed of the offer ahead of the announcement, yesterday urged Russia to let the world body take charge of the passages.

“Our suggestion is to Russia to actually leave the corridors being established at their initiative to us,” he said. “How can you expect people to want to walk through a corridor, thousands of them, while there is shelling, bombing and fighting?”

But the UN, which has described the siege as “medieval”, is at the mercy of President Assad.

Hospital
People inspect the damage as they stand near a Save the Children sponsored maternity hospital after an airstrike in the rebel-controlled town of Kafer Takhareem in Idlib province CREDIT: REUTERS

The regime regularly withholds aid to besieged areas. In the UN’s latest delivery to a town near Damascus, the government removed analgesic pain relievers, ventilators for adults and children, as well as x-ray machines and burn kits from trucks which had been granted access.

They have completely denied entry to some besieged areas for years.

Getting compliance for Aleppo will be much harder. Winning the battle is critical to the Assad regime’s survival. The city is so important to both sides in the conflict that it is often referred to as “Syria’s Stalingrad”, as whoever controls Aleppo will most probably win the seemingly endless war.

The city’s fate is complicated further by a recent deal struck by the US and Russia, which have backed different sides of the war. Washington last week agreed in a behind-closed-doors meeting to coordinate with Moscow in striking al-Qaeda offshoot Jabhat al-Nusra, which is dedicated to fighting Assad.

In return, America was to receive an assurance from Russia that it would help end the siege and ground Assad’s air force.

So when Syria and Russia announced their own offer on Thursday, it took Washington by surprise.

Aleppo
Syria civil defence workers dig a boy out of a collapsed building following airstrikes on Aleppo CREDIT: AFP/GETTY

“Why would you evacuate a city that you wanted to send humanitarian aid to?” one bewildered US official asked, ahead of a planned meeting of the two sides in Geneva next week. “That would appear to be a unilateral effort by Moscow and Assad to pre-empt [Secretary of State John] Kerry’s demand for ending the siege of Aleppo before starting negotiations on the larger issues.”

Mr Kerry himself said he was still unsure of Moscow’s intent: “It has the risk, if it is a ruse, of completely breaking apart the level of cooperation (between the two powers).”

At the same time, Nusra announced a split from its parent organisation al-Qaeda and renamed itself, in a suspected attempt to pursue a unified front with other opposition groups and avoid being targeted.

Putin
Assad with Putin. Russian planes are bombarding the Syrian opposition rebels CREDIT:REUTERS

The move will make it much harder for the Washington and Moscow to distinguish between Islamist fighters and the more moderate opposition, namely the US-backed Free Syrian Army (FSA), on the ground.

Russia seemed to have checkmated the US, analysts said, leaving their strategy completely unravelling.

“This is the Russians rejecting the American deal,” said Chris Doyle, director of Council for Arab-British Understanding. “They’ve essentially laid down a blueprint of what they plan for Aleppo and told the Americans, ‘You take this or it’ll be a much longer, drawn-out war of attrition and starvation’.”

Opposition forces on the ground seemed equally dumbfounded.

“We don’t even know what America is doing anymore,” a commander of a US-backed group fighting in Aleppo said. “They are like a once-good friend that hasn’t called in some time.”

Source: Syrian families trickle out of Aleppo as residents choose between torture or starvation