DOUMA: Aid workers have evacuated the first few ill patients
from Syrian rebel bastion Eastern Ghouta under a deal struck after the
UN said hundreds are in critical condition following a four-year
government siege.
Three children and a man were loaded
overnight into ambulances bound for hospitals in Damascus before being
transported out past government lines that have held the region’s
estimated 400,000 residents in a stranglehold since 2013.
A
total of 29 emergency medical cases are expected to be evacuated under a
deal with the government that saw rebels release five workmen detained
during fierce clashes with the army in March.
The four
patients allowed out were a girl with haemophilia, a baby with the
autoimmune disorder Guillain-Barre, a child with leukaemia, and a man in
need of a kidney transplant, Red Crescent official Ahmed al-Saour said.
Eight-year-old
Ingy, the girl with haemophilia, gave a broad smile as she boarded an
ambulance, wearing a woolly hat and gloves against the cold.
In
another ambulance, one-year-old Mohammed lay in the lap of a Red
Crescent worker, his mother sitting beside them in a long black cloak
and a veil showing only her eyes.
“The operation is a
positive step which will bring some respite to the people of Eastern
Ghouta,” said International Committee of the Red Cross spokeswoman Ingy
Sedky. “We hope these medical evacuations are only the beginning.”
The
Syrian American Medical Society, another medical relief organisation,
said the remainder of the 29 critical cases approved for evacuation
should leave in the coming days. The dominant rebel faction in Eastern
Ghouta, Jaish al-Islam (Army of Islam), said the rebels had agreed to
free some of their prisoners in return for the evacuations.
“We
have agreed to the release of a number of prisoners... in exchange for
the evacuation of the most urgent humanitarian cases,” the group said a
statement. The years of government siege have caused severe shortages
in Eastern Ghouta, one of the last remaining rebel strongholds in Syria.
