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Medical evacuation of Syria’s Eastern Ghouta begins: ICRC
GENEVA, Dec 27, 2017 (BSS/AFP) – Aid workers have begun evacuating
emergency medical cases from Syria’s besieged rebel bastion of Eastern
Ghouta, the International Committee of the Red Cross said Wednesday, after
months of waiting during which the UN said at least 16 people had died.
“Tonight the @SYRedCrescent with @ICRC team started the evacuation of
critical medical cases from #EasternGhouta to #Damascus,” the ICRC said on
its verified Twitter account.
Pictures posted with the tweets appeared to show a convoy of ambulances
ready to move the critically ill patients.
The Syrian American Medical Society, another medical relief organisation,
said the evacuations covered “29 critical cases, approved for medical
evacuation to Damascus. Four patients were evacuated today.”
It said the remainder would be evacuated in the coming days.
Eastern Ghouta is one of the last remaining rebel strongholds in Syria and
has been under a tight government siege since 2013, causing severe food and
medical shortages for some 400,000 residents.
While some food is still grown locally, or smuggled in, humanitarian
access to the region has been limited despite regular appeals from aid
agencies.
The Syrian Red Crescent said in a tweet that its volunteers “just started
to transfer cases in need of medical care from east Ghouta to hospitals in
Damascus after long negotiations”.
Further details were not immediately available.
Last week, Jan Egeland, the head of the UN’s humanitarian taskforce for
Syria, warned that at least 16 people had died while waiting for evacuation
from Eastern Ghouta.
He said a list put together several months ago of nearly 500 civilians in
desperate need of evacuation was rapidly shrinking.
“That number is going down, not because we are evacuating people, but
because they are dying,” he told reporters in Geneva.
“We have confirmation of 16 having died on these lists since they were
resubmitted in November, and it is probably higher,” he said, highlighting
the case of a baby who died on December 14, as the latest round of Syria
peace talks in Geneva ended in failure.
“I fear there will be many more. During this Christmas and holiday season,
there will be more deaths unless we get evacuation going,” he said.
Egeland said evacuations and efforts to bring aid into the region had been
blocked by a lack of authorisations from the Syrian authorities.
The Eastern Ghouta region, near the capital Damascus, is one of the last
strongholds of rebels fighting the forces of President Bashar al-Assad.
Eastern Ghouta is one of four “de-escalation” zones agreed in May in a bid
to reduce fighting in some parts of the war-ravaged country, but the regime
has ramped up bombing since mid-November.
More than 340,000 people have been killed and millions have been driven
from their homes since Syria’s conflict erupted with anti-government protests
in 2011.
BSS/AFP/MR/ 1020 hrs