FOX NEWS REPORTED:
BEIRUT – Russia threatened Sunday to
veto a U.N. resolution demanding immediate access to areas of Aleppo besieged
by the Syrian government, while a shaky deal to evacuate thousands of trapped
civilians was thrown into doubt again after militants burned buses involved in
the rescue operation.
The Aleppo evacuations were to have been
part of a wider deal that would simultaneously allow more than 2,000 sick and
wounded people to leave two pro-government villages that have been besieged by
Syrian rebels. Most villagers are Shiite Muslims, while most rebels are Sunni
Muslims.
Six buses that were among those poised to
enter the villages of Foua and Kfarya on Sunday were set on fire by
unidentified militants, presumably to scuttle any deal.
A video posted online showed armed men near
the burning buses as celebratory gunshots rang out. "The buses that came
to evacuate the apostates have been burned," the narrator of the video
said. He warned that no "Shiite pigs" would be allowed to leave the
towns.
The video could not be verified
independently, but was in line with AP reporting from the area.
Earlier Sunday, pro-Syrian government TV
stations showed dozens of buses on stand-by at a crossing near east Aleppo,
reportedly poised to resume evacuations from the opposition's last foothold in
the city.
The evacuations had been suspended two days
earlier amid mutual recriminations after several thousand people had been
ferried out of the war zone. Thousands more desperate civilians are believed
trapped in the city.
About 2,700 children were evacuated in the
first rescue mission earlier this week, but hundreds more "are now waiting
in freezing temperatures, close to the front lines," said Shusan Mebrahtu
of the U.N. agency for children, UNICEF. "We are deeply worried."
Wissam Zarqa, an English teacher and Aleppo
resident, said he went to an evacuation point in east Aleppo on Sunday
afternoon and found buses with evacuees on board, but that the vehicles did not
move. The opposition's Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights also
said the buses hadn't left the city.
Several buses with Aleppo evacuees were
stuck for hours in a buffer zone between the front lines in the city, according
to aid officials familiar with the negotiations between the two sides.
Rami Zien, who was on board one of the
buses, said passengers had been stuck in the buffer zone since 1:30 p.m.
"Government forces are just ahead of me," he wrote in a text message.
"If anything goes wrong, I will be the first to die."
On Friday, a bus convoy carrying evacuees
was stuck in government territory in Aleppo and was turned back after being
searched.
The continued suspension of evacuations is
throwing into disarray an Aleppo deal that had been brokered last week by Syria
ally Russia and opposition supporter Turkey.
The deal marked a turning point in the
country's civil war. With the opposition leaving Aleppo, Syrian President
Bashar Assad has effectively reasserted his control over Syria's five largest
cities and its Mediterranean coast nearly six years after a national movement
to unseat him took hold.
At the United Nations, the Security Council
held closed-door consultations Sunday on a French-drafted resolution that
demands safe evacuations, immediate and unconditional U.N. access to deliver
humanitarian aid and protection of medical facilities and personnel.
France's U.N. ambassador, Francois Delattre,
said the goal of the resolution is to avoid "mass atrocities" by
Syrian forces, and especially militias, in eastern Aleppo, which is now
defenseless following the defeat of rebel forces.
Delattre said that "our goal is to
avoid another or a new Srebrenica," a reference to the massacre of nearly
8,000 Bosnian Muslims who sought protection in the U.N. safe haven of
Srebrenica in 1995 during the Bosnian war.
Russia's U.N. ambassador, Vitaly Churkin,
said he would veto the resolution unless it was changed, arguing that allowing
monitors to wander in the ruins of eastern Aleppo without proper preparation
"has disaster written all over it."
Russia proposed a rival resolution that
would require Syrian government approval before the United Nations could deploy
any monitors to eastern Aleppo to check on civilians.
Delattre said France would seek an emergency
special session of the U.N. General Assembly if Russia vetoes the French draft.
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