Tunisian Revolution and the Middle East--And Now, The Withdrawal From Afghanistan (M.E.T.)

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Edited February 24, 2018 by visionary

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Edited February 24, 2018 by visionary

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Edited March 5, 2018 by visionary

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The official, who entered the area with a relief convoy earlier this week, added that many of those who preferred to leave might nonetheless choose to stay even if the snipers relented. They feared for their safety in government-held territory, he said, and worried that they might never be allowed to return.

 

The government has rejected most requests to deliver humanitarian aid, and this week’s convoy to Douma, the largest city in eastern Ghouta, was the first since November. But medical supplies were removed by the government before the convoy set out and government airstrikes forced it to retreat before the last 14 of its 46 trucks could be unloaded. The strikes began well before the end of the five-hour daily cease-fire window that Russia, the Syrian government’s main ally, has promised.

 

While the government has previously offered to relocate civilians from besieged rebel areas to other rebel territory, it has yet to do so in eastern Ghouta, where government attacks have killed more than 1,000 people, mostly civilians, since Feb. 18. Even if the government made such an offer, there does not seem to be any place in rebel territory that could accommodate the large numbers that might want to leave.

 

“They want out — either the bombing to stop, or to get out. But reach safety where?” the official, Sajjad Malik, said on Thursday in an interview in Beirut. “We are getting to a point where there is literally no flight option. What worse situation could there be?”

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Mr. Malik said that two people had been killed by rebel snipers as a family tried to escape through a corridor from the eastern Ghouta city of Douma, though two children managed to make it to the other side. That area is controlled by a rebel group called the Army of Islam.

 

Government fire, too, has made crossings difficult. At the other end of eastern Ghouta, a second exit corridor was opened on Thursday from an area controlled by a different rebel group, Faylaq al-Rahman. There, a family of five was killed on Friday in a government airstrike as they tried to reach the crossing, said Ahmed Hamdan, an anti-government activist in the area.

 

Protests erupted on Friday in the town of Kafr Batna, also controlled by Faylaq al-Rahman. A resident there confirmed the authenticity of footage shown on Syrian state television of residents asking the group to leave so that the government would stop bombing.

The government has rejected most requests to deliver humanitarian aid, and this week’s convoy to Douma, the largest city in eastern Ghouta, was the first since November. But medical supplies were removed by the government before the convoy set out and government airstrikes forced it to retreat before the last 14 of its 46 trucks could be unloaded. The strikes began well before the end of the five-hour daily cease-fire window that Russia, the Syrian government’s main ally, has promised.

 

On Friday, government shelling again interrupted a delivery attempt, when the remaining 14 trucks made their way into Douma. That forced United Nations officials and workers on the convoy to hide in basements, said observers in Douma with the Violations Documentation Center, a Syrian organization that tracks the conflict.

 

 

 

 

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Edited March 15, 2018 by visionary

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Edited March 18, 2018 by visionary

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