Aleppo evacuations resume as ISIL kills four Turkish soldiers in Syria

The Turkish military is facing increasing resistance in the battle to take ISIL-held Al Bab, a key town close to Syria's border with Turkey

Syrians evacuated from Aleppo arrive at a refugee camp in Rashidin, near Idlib, on December 20, 2016. AP Photo
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ALEPPO // Evacuations from the last rebel-held pocket of east Aleppo resumed on Wednesday despite heavy snowfall, clearing a path for Syria’s army to take full control of the devastated city.

The evacuations – which have seen thousands of rebels and civilians leave the east of the city – faced delays earlier in the day, leaving hundreds hungry and cold waiting to escape.

But Syrian state television reported that after a 24-hour delay, 20 buses carrying “armed men and their families” had left for rebel territory to the west of the city.

Ahmad Al Dbis, who heads a team of doctors and volunteers coordinating evacuations, said a convoy of 20 buses had transported 1,500 people out of the last rebel-held pocket, including 20 wounded.

It came as four Turkish soldiers were killed and 15 wounded in clashes with ISIL fighters as the Turkish military faced increasing resistance in the battle to take a key town, said Turkey’s state-run Anadolu news agency.

The ISIL-held town of Al Bab, 25 kilometres from the Turkish border, has become the main target of the Turkish army’s more than three-month campaign inside Syria in support of pro-Ankara Syrian rebels.

The ISIL-linked Amaq news agency said a suicide attack was carried out against the Syrian rebels and Turkish troops west of Al Bab, without giving further details.

The Turkish air force struck 47 ISIL targets around Al Bab, killing more than 45 extremists, reported Anadolu.

Meanwhile, a US-backed Arab-Kurdish alliance advanced on Wednesday to several kilometres from the largest prison held by ISIL in Syria’s northern province of Raqaa, an opposition monitoring group said.

Members of the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) were eight kilometres from the jail near the country’s largest dam at Tabqa on the Euphrates River, according to the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

On December 10, the SDF announced “phase two” of its campaign against Raqqa, ISIL’s de facto Syrian capital, which lies some 50 kilometres east of Tabqa in the same province.

The alliance has since captured dozens of villages and hamlets, the Observatory says, after taking 700 square kilometres from the extremists in a first phase of the assault launched on November 5.

Western hostages of the group are believed to have been held at the jail near the town of Taqba, where senior ISIL leaders live, the Britain-based Observatory said.

The SDF is backed by air strikes from a US-led coalition fighting the extremists as well as by some US forces on the ground.

In Aleppo, evacuations were on the verge of being finished, according to Ahmad Qarra Ali of the powerful – and hardline – Ahrar Al Sham rebel group.

“All the evacuations will be completed today, in several convoys,” he said.

A Syrian military source said it was possible the last evacuations could take place on Wednesday, but that the process has been plagued by repeated hold-ups.

At least 25,000 people have left rebel-held and formerly rebel-held districts of Aleppo since opposition fighters agreed last week to withdraw after years of fighting, according to the International Committee of the Red Cross, which is overseeing the operation.

The retreat from Aleppo – which had been divided into a rebel-held east and government-controlled west since 2012 – marks the biggest victory for president Bashar Al Assad’s forces in nearly six years of civil war.

With the evacuations delayed on Wednesday morning, evacuees spent hours in freezing temperatures waiting in the buses to depart, as snow blanketed Aleppo and swirled through its crumbled buildings.

“The buses are not heated. The passengers, including women, children and elderly people, are suffering from the cold. They don’t have food or water,” said Mr Al Dbis.

It was unclear how many civilians remained inside east Aleppo, though Mr Al Dbis said there were “a few thousand” who were still hoping to leave.

The delays on Wednesday appeared to be connected with a parallel evacuation of residents taking place in the villages of Fou and Kefraya in northwestern Syria.

The two Shiite-majority villages are under siege by the mainly Sunni rebels.

Delays in evacuations were reported there – after about 750 people had been able to leave in recent days – but later on Wednesday state television reported that four buses, and two ambulances carrying the wounded, had been able to leave.

* Agence France-Presse