Beirut (Reuters): On Sunday, Gunmen attacked buses sent to evacuate people from two pro-regime villages in north-west Syria but the incident should not disrupt parallel evacuations from Aleppo, a senior military source said.
Hundreds and Thousands of people were to leave the last rebel-held parts of the northern city of Aleppo in exchange for residents leaving Fuaa and Kafraya, Shia villages, in the neighbouring province of Idlib. But two dozen armed men attacked buses on their way to the villages under rebel siege.
The reporter said, they made the drivers get out, opened fire on the vehicles and set fire to the fuel tanks of at least 20 buses.
The deadly attack came after five other buses had entered the villages.
Immediately the identity of the attackers was not clear, but the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (HR) said two member groups of a coalition of Islamist rebels controlling most of Idlib had disagreed over the evacuations.
The monitoring group said that Fateh al-Sham Front, which was formerly known as the Al Nusra Front before renouncing ties with Al Qaeda, disagreed with Ahrar al-Sham over the deal.
On the contrary according to the military source the attack should not affect any of the evacuation operations. “There’s collective will for the deal to stay in place. There must be solutions for all obstacles,” the source said.
On Sunday, dozens of buses began entering the last rebel-held parts of east Aleppo to resume the evacuation of thousands of increasingly desperate trapped civilians and rebels.
The operation was suspended on Friday, a day after convoys of evacuees had begun leaving the rebel sector under a deal allowing the regime to take full control of the battleground city.
One of the senior Iranian officials complained of bias in attitudes towards civilians in east Aleppo and those of the two Shia villages, on Sunday. “While the Western-Hebrew-Arabic media have united to spread false information on the human losses in Aleppo, they remain silent on the need to evacuate the wounded and elderly from Fuaa and Kafraya,” Ali Shamkhani, secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, reported.
