Bloodied and demoralized Syrians evacuate Aleppo

Associated Press

BEIRUT

Weeping, hobbling on crutches or dragging suitcases, hundreds of survivors of a devastating government bombardment and siege left the last sliver of opposition-held Aleppo on Thursday, an evacuation that sealed the end of the rebellion’s most important stronghold and was a watershed moment in Syria’s 5-year-old civil war.

For the opposition, it was a humiliating defeat. A smiling President Bashar Assad called it a historic event comparable to the birth of Christ and the revelation of the Quran.

A U.N. official described it as “a black chapter in the history of international relations.”

Traumatized residents filtered out to green government buses on a chilly day through Aleppo’s streets lined with flattened buildings. Years of resistance were stamped out in a relentless campaign over the past month that saw hospitals bombed, bodies left unburied and civilians blown apart by shells as they fled for safety.

“We struggled for six years. We were supposed to be the ones to get them out, not them us,” said one tearful woman who held a baby, speaking in a video.

She explained that it wasn’t the bombardment that forced them out. “We left because we feared for our honor from the regime.”

Under a surrender deal brokered by Russia and Turkey, tens of thousands of residents and rebel fighters are being evacuated to opposition-controlled areas in the surrounding countryside, a process likely to take several days.

Eastern Aleppo rose in revolt against Assad in 2012 and battled since then with the western, government-held part of the city in one of the most horrific and destructive fronts of the civil war.