Syrian boys, evacuated from Aleppo, sit in a field hospital bed near Idlib, Syria, Friday, Dec. 16, 2016. Picture by AP/Press Association Images. All rights reserved.As I write these lines, residents of Eastern Aleppo are being evacuated or forcibly displaced after years of siege by the Assad regime, and all-out bombardment of the erstwhile rebel-held part of Syria’s largest city by Russian and Syrian aircrafts. The convoys carrying hundreds of injured are being dropped off in either rebel-held countryside of Western-Aleppo or the Idlib province dominated by Jabhat Fatah al-Sham (formerly al-Nusra Front) the Syrian affiliate of al-Qaeda. The evacuation comes days after at least 82 civilians, including 13 children, were executed point-blank by regime forces and allied Iraqi militias. “Numerous bodies are lying on the streets,” said the UN Human Rights Commission, in one of its recent reports
While people from Eastern Aleppo are mourning the loss of their homes, or whatever was left of them, and the lives of their loved ones, images from regime-held Western Aleppo show people celebrating. This might be explained by the fact that, throughout the past years, regular rebel shelling from the Eastern parts of the city has killed hundreds of civilians in the Western one and injured thousands others.
While emphasizing upon the fact that the people who lost their lives are not mere numbers, it must be noted that of the nearly half a million who have been killed, the actions of the Assad regime have killed most of them (more than 90%), followed by armed opposition factions, (1.81%) and then Russian forces (1.71%). This goes to show the scale of regime- atrocities against ordinary civilians, while also underlining the impossibility of a meaningful reconciliation under Assad’s reign.
