Syria: Catholic hospital welcomes sick and wounded from East Aleppo

A ceasefire deal to allow the evacuation of rebels and tens of thousands of civilians from eastern Aleppo up to areas located near the border with Turkey is back on. Syrian official sources claim that the evacuation yesterday allowed more than right thousand people to leave Aleppo, and the suspension occurred because today the rebels and the jihadist forces have not complied with the terms of the agreement, trying to bring some prisoners with them.

Other pro-government Syrian sources say that the operation was suspended, in areas still in the hands of anti-Assad militias, after mortar shells were launched on the open humanitarian corridors to allow convoys, used for the evacuation, to pass. The same accusations are instead directed against pro-Assad militias from sources close to the rebels.

Meanwhile, from the eastern districts of Aleppo, many civilians have been fleeing and managed to get to the western area of Aleppo, which always remained under the control of the Syrian army, and where the sick and wounded are beginning to crowd in unsustainable local health structures, operating already for years in emergency conditions, because of the conflict.

Dr Emile Katti, a surgeon and director of the Hospital of Aleppo in Raja in Aleppo, supported by the Custody of the Holy Land said: "The first cases we've seen have been typical of what people have been going through for months: a man who has had a fractured arm for seven months, and already undergone a badly carried out operation by an Egyptian doctor. Then there is a Downes child who for four years has not been receiving appropriate care for his illnesses; there is another boy with shrapnel in his head, which fortunately has not affected vital parts of his body. His father was killed a few months ago."

The stories of people from the neighbourhoods which until recently were in the hands of rebel groups and jihadist militias highlight details often ignored by the mainstream media: Dr Katti, who spoke last month at a conference at the Biomedical Campus University in Rome, described how the sister of one of his employees and all her family were killed by snipers while they were trying to leave east Aleppo through humanitarian corridors. "The sick and the wounded who come from those neighbourhoods report that there was hunger, and they were reduced to eating grass..."

On Thursday December 15, a column of 20 green buses left the eastern districts of Aleppo, several times, carrying about 1,200 people each time to the areas close to the border with Turkey.

The agreement on the evacuation of the militiamen and civilians from east Aleppo, mediated by Russia and Turkey, provided as a counterpart the end of the siege of two Shiite villages in the province of Idlib, surrounded for a long by jihadist militias.

Dr Katti said it was difficult to verify the figures of civilians who remained in the areas of Aleppo until recently in the hands of insurgent groups: "many repeated without verification that in that part of the city there were more than 250,000 inhabitants, but the real figure appears to be much lower. And now it has become virtually impossible to count them, as people run away as soon as they can, in so many directions. And many are greeted with great spirit of solidarity by relatives and acquaintances who they were not able to meet for years."

Source: Fides