A new deal is being negotiated to complete the evacuation of rebel-held areas of Syria's east Aleppo which ground to a halt yesterday after demands from pro-government forces that people also be moved out of two villages besieged by insurgents.
A Syrian rebel official and a government official said early today the evacuation of Aleppo would resume and the two Shi'ite villages would be evacuated, as well as the wounded from two towns near the Lebanese border and east Aleppo.
But sources said negotiations were still going on to finalise how the evacuations would take place and how many people would leave. By this afternoon there was no sign it was being implemented, with only an hour to go before sunset.
A point of contention in talks this week has been the number of people who will be allowed to leave the Shi'ite villages of al-Foua and Kefraya in Idlib province, which are besieged by insurgents.
The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) said thousands of cold, scared and injured people were still in east Aleppo waiting to leave. It said it had received some indications that a deal would be reached soon.
"It was agreed to resume evacuations from east Aleppo in parallel with the evacuation of (medical) cases from Kefraya and al-Foua and some cases from Zabadani and Madaya," said the government official, part of the evacuations negotiating team.
The towns of Madaya and Zabadani are blockaded by pro-government forces.
The operation to evacuate fighters and civilians from the last opposition-held area of Aleppo was suspended yesterday, its second day, after pro-government militias demanded that wounded people also be brought out of al-Foua and Kefraya, and protesters blocked the evacuation road out of Aleppo.
There were recriminations on all sides and UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said "Aleppo is now a synonym for hell".
The chaos surrounding the Aleppo evacuation reflects the complexity of Syria's civil war, with an array of groups and foreign interests involved on each side.
Aleppo had been divided between government and rebel areas in the nearly six-year war, but a lightning advance by the Syrian army and its allies that began in mid-November after months of intense air strikes deprived the insurgents of most of their territory in a matter of weeks.
Numerous activists, rebels and east Aleppo residents shared reports and videos of people fleeing the sound of shooting, being detained and returning home badly beaten and robbed of their possessions near a checkpoint as they tried to leave the city yesterday.
Syrian rebel official al-Farouk Abu Bakr, speaking from Aleppo to news channel al-Arabiya al-Hadath today, said the previous evacuation deal was breached by pro-government militias who detained "hundreds" of people trying to leave, leading to some deaths.
A Syrian military source denied this, but said a convoy trying to leave Aleppo was returned back to the city.
"Now we are working on international guarantees to guarantee the safety of those who leave Aleppo so that such violations are not repeated," Mr Abu Bakr said.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which monitors the war, said no buses or ambulances had entered al-Foua or Kefraya. It said around 20,000 people, of whom roughly 4,500 are pro-government fighters, were in the villages.
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