Evacuation of Civilians in Syria’s Ghouta Expected Tuesday: UN Official
TEHRAN (Tasnim) – The UN’s top aid official in Syria said an evacuation of civilians was expected on Tuesday out of the Eastern Ghouta district, where heavy clashes are taking place between the Syrian army and Takfiri terrorists.
“This day, we are expecting evacuation of civilians, including people with medical conditions,” the UN’s resident humanitarian coordinator in Syria, Ali al-Za’tari, told Reuters at al-Wafideen crossing near Douma, without elaborating.
The so-called Jaish al-Islam Takfiri outfit said on Monday it had reached an agreement with Russia to evacuate wounded people.
For the past several years, the flashpoint enclave, home to some 400,000 people, has been under the control of multiple foreign-backed terror groups, particularly the so-called Jaish al-Islam Takfiri outfit and the Jabhat Fateh al-Sham Takfiri terrorist group, formerly known as al-Nusra Front, which have practically captivated the civilians and use them as human shield against the government’s liberating forces.
The Syrian army troops, backed by pro-government forces, have launched a full-scale offensive to crush the terror outfits, which constantly launch mortar attacks against residential neighborhoods in and around Damascus, killing and wounding dozens of people.
Furthermore, the Ghouta-based militants are trying to prevent civilians from leaving the enclave as they constantly target the safe passages of al-Wafideen and Jisreen with shells and explosive bullets, killing a number of people so far.
Syria has been gripped by foreign-backed militancy since March 2011. The Syrian government says the Israeli regime and its Western and regional allies are aiding Takfiri terrorist groups that are wreaking havoc in the country.
According to the so-called Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, around 511,000 people have been killed in Syria since the onset of the foreign-backed militancy some seven years ago. It added in its Monday’s report that it had succeeded in identifying only more than 350,000 of those killed.
