UN aborts plan to evacuate Aleppo patients, blames all

The United Nations has abandoned plans to evacuate patients from besieged rebel-held east Aleppo which it had hoped to accomplish during a three day lull in fighting last week, blaming all parties to the conflict for obstructing efforts.
“The evacuations were obstructed by various factors, including delays in receiving the necessary approvals from local authorities in eastern Aleppo, conditions placed by non-state armed groups and the government of Syria’s objection to allowing medical and other relief supplies into the eastern part of the city,” UN Under-Secretary-General for humanitarian affairs and emergency relief coordinator Stephen O’Brien said in a statement on Monday.
O’Brien said no patients and family members were evacuated during the three-day Russian unilateral cease-fire last week which ended on Saturday with a resumption of airstrikes and a surge in ground fighting.
“I am outraged that the fate of vulnerable civilians — sick and injured people, children and the elderly, all in need of critical and life-saving support — rests mercilessly in the hands of parties who have consistently and unashamedly failed to put them above narrow political and military interests,” he said.
The UN has been unable to access east Aleppo since July, when Syrian government and allied forces put the eastern part of the city under siege.
Meanwhile, the Russian military said Tuesday the weeklong halt of Russian and Syrian airstrikes on the besieged city of Aleppo will continue and humanitarian corridors will remain open even as the Syrian army has unleashed a new offensive on the rebel-held neighborhoods.
Lt. Gen. Sergei Rudskoi of the military’s General Staff said Tuesday that Russian and Syrian warplanes have stayed 10 km away from Aleppo for a week. He said that “the moratorium on Russian and Syrian air strikes on the city will be extended.”
Last week, Russia also declared a three-day break in fighting intended to allow the evacuation of both militants and civilians from Aleppo’s rebel-held eastern part. The rebels rejected the Russian offer and the planned evacuation of civilians also failed.
Rudskoi accused the militants of preventing both civilians and the rebels willing to leave Aleppo from exiting the city.

Source: Arab News