PHOTO: East Aleppo residents await departure before Friday’s breakdown of the evacuation agreement (Abdalrhman Ismail/Reuters)

SATURDAY FEATURES

Opinion: Everyone Connected with Aleppo Abomination Will Pay A Heavy Price
Videos: The Endangered Civilians in Aleppo

UPDATE 1320 GMT: Russia has rejected an initiative to put international monitors into eastern Aleppo city to oversee the removal of civilians and rebels.

France’s Ambassador to the UN, Francois Delattre said on Friday that Paris plans to introduce a Security Council resolution.

But Russian Ambassador Vitaly Churkin dismissed the proposal:

Deployment of monitors will take weeks. These are to be well-prepared people who know what they do and how to do that. It is unrealistic to think that it can be done in a span of two or three days.

Do we need to waste two months to resume a United Nations monitoring mission?

UPDATE 0810 GMT: Local sources and pro-opposition activists say a new evacuation deal has been agreed.

The sources say the deal includes a provision for the removal of some wounded from two regime enclaves in opposition-held Idlib Province, a demand that led Iran to break two previous agreements.

A rebel negotiator has now confirmed the agreement. He said that the evacuations from the regime enclaves, al-Fu’ah and Kafraya, will be matched by removals from Zabadani and Madaya in Damascus Province.

Rebels had feared that the inclusion of al-Fu’ah and Kafraya in a deal would endanger civilians in Zabadani and Madaya. The four enclaves are currently linked in an agreement providing for aid and assurances against being overrun.

The rebel negotiator, Al Faruq Abu Bakr, said guarantees will be implemented for the safety of the operations.

ORIGINAL ENTRY: Pro-Assad and Iranian-led militias have broken the evacuation agreement for Syria’s largest city Aleppo, renewing uncertainity over the fate of tens of thousands of people in opposition areas.

A day after the implementation of the latest deal brokered by Russia and Turkey, the militias — said to be Iran’s Lebanese ally Hezbollah by most accounts — intervened by blocking a convoy of about 800 passengers. According to those on the convoy, they surrounded the buses with armored vehicles, fired into the air, and forced the men to undress before seizing mobiles, money, and clothing.

See Syria Daily, Dec 16: Aleppo Evacuation Halted by New Pro-Assad Attacks

Some of the passengers said four evacuees were killed, including a rebel who resisted, although a BBC reporter said another “source on the convoy” denied any deaths.

Others — including the rebel’s pregnant wife — were wounded. At least seven people were detained, the passengers said.

Before the militia attacks, eight convoys had brought about 10,000 people out of Aleppo. An estimated 50,000 are still awaiting transport.

Meanwhile, in opposition districts in eastern Aleppo city, the militias ordered aid agencies to leave and fired on residents. Videos showed civilians fleeing and crying.

Iran’s Power Play

The breaking of the deal appeared to be Iran’s latest objection to its terms, overruling Russia, the Assad regime’s other main ally.

The militias also broke the initial agreement on Wednesday and threatened it early Thursday with shelling and gunfire, delaying the removals from eastern Aleppo by 36 hours.

Iran is insisting that the deal include the evacuation of wounded from two regime enclaves in opposition-held Idlib Province. Rebels have objected because the provision could endanger the opposition-held towns of Madaya and Zabadani in Damascus Province.

The regime enclaves, al-Fu’ah and Kafraya, are linked to Madaya and Zabadani in an arrangement which ensures provision of aid and assurances against being overrun. Rebels say that the de-linking, through an Aleppo deal, could lead to tightened sieges and attacks on the two Damascus towns.

Russia has broken from Tehran by supporting the exclusion of al-Fu’ah and Kafraya from any formal agreement. Reports said that Turkey has given private assurances that evacuations of the wounded will proceed, but pro-Assad outlets say rebels have refused and declared that this was the cause of Friday’s attack on the Aleppo convoy.

After the initial defiance of the deal by the Iranian-led and pro-Assad militias on Wednesday, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin spurred its renewal through a series of phone calls.

On Friday, Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu tried to revive the deal with a call to Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif.

However, Russia publicly declared the termination of the agreement in an abrupt shift of position: hours earlier, Putin had hailed the agreement and co-operation with Turkey, saying that regime-opposition talks would soon be held in Kazakhstan

Moscow put out a series of false pretexts, claiming that all those who wished to leave Aleppo had done so, as the Syrian military asserted — with no evidence — that rebels were smuggling abducted people out of the city.

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon reacted: “Aleppo is now a synonym for hell. I very much regret that we had to stop this operation.”

Women and children scramble for safety amid the gunfire by pro-Assad militias:

A man cries after the attack:

Obama Defends His Inaction

President Obama defended his approach to the Syrian crisis on Friday, maintaining that an effective response was impossible without a full US military intervention: “Unless we were all in and willing to take over Syria, we were going to have problems.”

See Syria Special: Obama’s Legacy Will Be Forever Tarnished by His Inaction

Obama told a news conference that intervention would have meant “putting large numbers of U.S. troops on the ground, uninvited, without any international law mandate”.

He insisted that any protected zone for civilians would need to be maintained by on-the-ground forces unless the US secured the cooperation of the Assad regime and its allies.

While justifying the refusal to act, Obama said, “Responsibility for this brutality [in Aleppo city] lies in one place alone: with the Assad regime and its allies, Russia and Iran. This blood, and these atrocities, are on their hands.”

He maintained, “Although you may achieve tactical victories, over the long term the Assad regime cannot slaughter its way to legitimacy.”