BEIRUT — Rights group Amnesty International on Friday
urged the Syrian government to immediately allow humanitarian aid into a rebel
holdout under regime "siege" in the southern city of Daraa.
اضافة اعلان
The UN has warned of food shortages in opposition-held Daraa
Al-Balad, which is surrounded by Russia-backed regime soldiers seeking to
retake control of the area.
Clashes have raged between both sides in recent weeks,
before a shaky Moscow-brokered truce deal saw dozens of rebels quit the area
this week.
"The Syrian government must immediately lift the siege
to facilitate unfettered access for humanitarian organizations and allow the
medical evacuation of the sick and injured," said Amnesty's Syria
researcher Diana Semaan.
She called on all sides to "grant safe passage to civilians
wanting to flee the area".
The rights group said the government now rarely approved
medical evacuations, while many of the ill or wounded feared they would be
detained or face reprisals if they stepped into regime-held territory.
One woman told Amnesty last week the shops were almost empty
of all food.
Her cousin had died because he was not granted permission to
leave for urgent medical treatment, she told the rights group.
The UN humanitarian agency OCHA said Tuesday that 38,600
people — more than half of them children — had fled
Daraa Al-Balad and been
registered in and around the city.
Amnesty said the exodus happened after the government
briefly opened a checkpoint for people to leave the area.
Around 20,000 people remained inside with scarce supplies,
it said.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based war
monitor with sources inside Syria, said regime forces fired mortar rounds at
Daraa Al-Balad on Friday.
There was no sign of any resumption of the evacuation of
rebels under the truce deal, it added.
The Observatory had said that 53 people, mostly
"fighters who rejected the reconciliation deal", left on Thursday.
Syria's state news agency said the number had been 45 and
included family members.
Thursday's evacuation came two days after an initial smaller
group of opposition fighters boarded buses bound for the rebel-held north of
the country, according to the Observatory.
The wider province of Daraa, seen as the birthplace of
Syria's uprising in 2011 and held for years by opposition forces, was returned
to government control in 2018.
Some rebels left under a previous Moscow-backed ceasefire at
the time, but others kept their weapons and remained in control of several
areas, including Daraa Al-Balad.
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