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A YOUNG SYRIAN girl who came to worldwide prominence as she tweeted from the siege of Aleppo has been safely evacuated, according to local media and aid agencies.
Bana al-Abed and her mother Fatemah, who have built up a following of over 338,000 people on their Twitter account, have been taken to al-Rashideen, in the countryside on the southwest outskirts of Aleppo.
Speaking to the activist-run Qasioun News Agency in the Aleppo countryside, Fatemah Alabed said she was glad to have finally reached safety but expressed regret that she was forced out of her home city and said she did not want to become a refugee.
“I left my soul there [in Aleppo],” she said. Turkish agency IHH also wrote that they “warmly welcomed” Bana and her mother Fatemah to the countryside.
Journalist Hadi Alabdallah, meanwhile, broadcast a short interview with Bana.
Bana’s Twitter account has been one of the few English-language Twitter accounts to give an account of what happened in Aleppo, although some critics have questioned the veracity of the information and the agenda behind the tweets.
Bana’s Twitter account was deactivated briefly at the start of this month, during intense fighting in the siege of Aleppo, leading to concerns about the safety of the young girl and her mother. However it was reactivated shortly afterwards.
UN monitors
Today the Security Council has approved the deployment of UN monitors to Aleppo as the evacuation of fighters and civilians from the last remaining opposition stronghold in the northern city resumed after days of delays.
France said the monitors were needed to prevent “mass atrocities” from being committed by Syrian government forces, especially militias. But thousands have already been evacuated and the operation will likely be over before the observers arrive.
Another evacuation is underway in two rebel-besieged Shiite villages, where the sick and wounded were being allowed out until gunmen torched several buses being used for the operation on Sunday. That evacuation has since resumed.
The resolution adopted this morning calls for the United Nations and other institutions to monitor evacuations from eastern Aleppo and demands that UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon urgently consult Syria and other parties on security and arrangements for the immediate deployment of the monitors.
France and Russia, who submitted rival draft resolutions, announced agreement on a text after more than three hours of closed-door consultations on Sunday.
The resolution also demands that all parties allow unconditional and immediate access for the UN and its partners to deliver humanitarian aid and medical care, and “respect and protect all civilians across Aleppo and throughout Syria.”
Delayed
The evacuation of Aleppo began last week after Turkey and Russia brokered a ceasefire as government forces were closing in on the rebels’ last redoubt in the country’s largest city, but has been repeatedly delayed.
The evacuation of more than 2,000 sick and wounded from the besieged Shiite villages of Foua and Kfarya was tacked onto the deal at the last minute. The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights and the pan-Arab Al-Mayadeen TV said 10 buses left with civilians on Monday.
There are also plans to evacuate hundreds of people from two Madaya and Zabadani, two besieged, rebel-held villages near the Lebanese border. The Observatory and Mayadeen said 15 buses entered the two villages today.
Rebel-held eastern Aleppo has been besieged for months, with several previous cease-fires breaking down and virtually no humanitarian aid reaching its tens of thousands of residents.
One of those who left Aleppo today was Mohammed Abu Jaafar, who described a miserable five-kilometre trip that took more than two hours in an overcrowded state bus. He said they passed three checkpoints, one manned by Russian troops, another by plainclothes Syrian intelligence agents and the third by Syrian troops.
Inside the bus, men, women and children were hungry and cold as they waited for hours in freezing temperatures, he said.
“Children were screaming, and some people fainted,” he said, adding that there was no baby formula or nappies.
Civilians
The Observatory and Turkey’s Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu later said that since midnight on Sunday, some 4,500 people have been evacuated from eastern Aleppo.
Reports differed on how many people remain in eastern Aleppo, but estimates converge around 15,000 civilians and 6,000 fighters.
Turkey’s state-run Anadolu Agency said a total of 131 wounded people — including 46 children — were brought to Turkey for treatment since the evacuations began last week. The agency said five of them have since died.
The departure from the Shiite villages had stalled Sunday after militants burned six empty buses assigned to take the villagers out. Bashar al-Ja’afari, Syria’s U.N. ambassador, told reporters in New York the bus drivers were taken hostage and three were killed.
If the evacuation from Aleppo is completed later on Monday, it will close another chapter in Syria’s civil war, now in its sixth year, with the government in control of Syria’s five largest cities and its Mediterranean coastline.
Three phases
The rebels captured eastern Aleppo in July 2012 and held on to it despite a ferocious assault in recent months by Syrian government forces, backed by Russia and a host of Shiite militias from Iraq, Lebanon, Iran and Afghanistan.
Capturing the entire city would be President Bashar Assad’s biggest victory since the Syrian conflict began in March 2011.
The Observatory’s chief, Rami Abdurrahman, said he expected the Aleppo evacuations to be completed later on Monday. He said the evacuations will happen in three phases.
First, 1,250 people from Foua and Kfarya will leave in return for the government allowing half of the people still in eastern Aleppo to head to rebel-held parts of the country.
Then, another 1,250 people will leave from the two Shiite villages, in exchange for the departure of all remaining civilians and opposition fighters in eastern Aleppo.
The third phase will include 1,500 people leaving from Foua and Kfarya and, in return, 1,500 people will be allowed to leave Madaya and Zabadani.
With reporting from AP.
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So what. Saudi Arabia is supporting Hillary, and donating money to her. I’d take Russia over an Islamic fundamentalist state any day, and it amazes me that liberals simply don’t care
@Homer’s imp son: I care but its stupid that it has to come down to these two eejits. There are other candidates out there better than Trump or Clinton, maybe not the best but better than these two, all people have to do is vote for them if they weren’t such sheep.
After America rejected the only half sane candidate Bernie Sanders, and his followers were mocked, I think it’s perfectly clear that the American people are beyond redemption
Makes sense, Hillary and her backers will go to war with Russia if she gets elected. Trump wants to improve relations. Its a no brainer ffs!
@Chris: Hillary works for the military complex financial squad anyway, make Russia the enemy and then sell more weapons to NATO countries?
Whether you like it or not America is s Republic, and as such the people have chosen the candidates. There are five names on the ballot, that’s four more than in Russia
I think Putin knows the Military Industrial Complex are backing Clinton and they are gunning for Russia.
There’s a reason the neo-con warhawks are backing her.
Well she did say Putin was the new Hitler in an interview last year….Neocons are wetting their pants at the thought of her in charge although saying that Trump is a complete clown so the options are both FUBAR.
They (Neo Zio/ Cons) hate Christian Russia and the fact that Putin outsmarted them in Ukraine and Syria.
@alan
@Alan Tright: Yes to create the same situations that caused WW1…
Alois, Are you saying that the Americans are going to assassinate the Archduke?
The whole situation is absurd, it’s like a school yard game of ‘whose side are you on?’.
Well if anyone knows what is best for America it’s Vladimir Putin. I’m sure he has the Americans best interests at heart.
Putin is a man of few words and many deeds. Trump is a man with a big mouth and nothing else.
That’s not true… Trump also has small hands.. and we all know what that means… small gloves…
At the end of the day the planet is safer with a trump and putin then a hitlery at the helm.. the neo cons are just waiting to get going’ as one of them said ‘on nukes’ “what’s the point of having them if you can’t use them”.. and with theresa may saying nukes are not off the table and would us em’ hitlery and may together would be an absolute disaster… interesting times ahead
Clinton didn’t have any issues with potentially closer relations with Russia when she was leading the ill-fated Russian Reset: “On 6 March 2009 in Geneva, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton presented Sergei Lavrov with a red button with the English word “reset” and the Roman alphabet transliteration of the Russian Cyrillic alphabet word “peregruzka”. It was intended that this would be theRussian word for “reset”.”
Later found to be a very poor translation. In any case the fact that Clinton as Secretary of State tried to thaw relations is hardly news or an issue. Putin didn’t play ball, he started to assert Russian ‘power’ again and the attempt failed. Nothing wrong with trying to warm relations but we all know what Russia is really like now and that Trump is at least somewhat tied to the worst aspects of the regime there and in the Ukraine.
@Gerard McAuliffe: Ukraine is full of neo Nazis who have issues with Stalin and blame this generation of Russians for him as they ethnically cleanse anyone in Ukraine with Russian blood using neo Nazi symbols on their uniforms, far right paramilitaries and money from the IMF to buy weapons?
We would all take Putin over Hillary you know it’s true!!
@Alex Jones: Why don’t you try living in Russia for a while before you commit to browntongueing that little runt of a dictator?
Putler could certainly give Trump a lot of good advice about acquiring wealth by abusing power; it is estimated that he and his family have creamed off at least $20 billion of the wealth of Russia, a country where millions live in or close to outright poverty. Even if Trump is worth half the billions he claims to have, he is only trotting after the Russian dictator.
On the other hand, although he was – and still is at heart – a KGB thug, there is really little that Putler could teach Trump about mendacity, duplicity, bigotry, disregard for human rights and respect for other countries’ sovereignty.
Come on Fintan, name one leader who’s been financially impoverished by power. They are all corrupted by it even at small nation and local levels. It’s a lot of pots calling a lot of kettles black-arsed.
As for Putin, I think we can safely call him a dictator, and doesn’t seem perturbed by morals. He is however one of the most capable and pragmatic world leaders in a long time, the sufferings he has caused is a lot less numerous than those caused by the war on terror and similar western campaigns of the same era. So both ‘sides’ need to condemned together. The only real difference is that Putin, while benefitting himself, has been openly acting as a ruthless champion for his own nations interests whereas the US/EU leadership have been covertly championing the interests of ‘the (their) market’, regardless of the people.
@Greg Blake: Can no one see how evil Hillary and Obama is, Obama will spend 1 trillion dollars on new nukes in the next 10 years, why???
Obama is out of office in 4 months. How exactly will he achieve this spending? Must be a really nice pension.
@Dave O Keeffe: Obama is war mad, the military financial complex mad.
http://fortune.com/2016/09/13/us-israel-military-aid/
I just want to know what trump and putin are smoking lol jees louise it must be some strong stuff lol
“His remarks were a clear allusion to Trump” Sounds more like paranoia to me. Hillary and Obama are only using Russia and Putin to blacken Trump because they can’t say what was great about Obama’s reign as president because Obama and Hillary belong to the same party and to the same government?
So Hillary can’t condemn herself or Obama or say what she is going to do because it will be the same as Obama’s but she can be racist towards Russia, call the half of America who supports Trump as traitors and anti American, she spreads muck and uses her pals in the media to spin the muck, just like the McCarty Trials all over again…
“We are carefully watching what is happening in the United States and we, of course, view with sympathy those who publicly state that it is necessary to build a relationship with Russia, on basis of equality,”
If you were a leader of a country would you want the candidate like Hillary that says she would start a war with you and Iran or a candidate that wants peace, what would you want?
You have an awful happen of ending statements with question marks.
@Dave O Keeffe: Yes I do but what do people want, peace or war with Russia as Hillary said she would attack Russia and Iran, vote for Hillary and she probably start WW3. Is that what people want.
Then you ask a question and use a full stop.
have your say