Mayor of fallen eastern Aleppo urges EU to help civilians

NAN-F-14

Appeal
Brussels, Dec. 15, 2016 (dpa/ NAN) More than 50,000 civilians are at risk in eastern Aleppo and the EU should send observers to ensure that they are evacuated.

The mayor of the besieged community said in a Thursday appeal before a summit of the bloc’s leaders.

Brita Hagi Hasan, head of the city council of eastern Aleppo, spoke to journalists in Brussels, before he was scheduled to meet with European Council President Donald Tusk, who would later chair the EU summit.

“There are more than 50,000 civilians in eastern Aleppo and they are about to be victims of a general massacre,” including more than 800 badly injured people and an additional 5,000 in less serious condition, Hasan said.

“We want a courageous position from the European Union, a position of sending of sending some [observer] forces to monitor the evacuation of civilians. We are not asking any country to go to war […] we only ask to save civilians,” he added.

His comments came as convoys were set to begin evacuating fighters and civilians from the besieged enclave under a deal brokered by Russia and Turkey.

Hasan said he lived in Aleppo from “the beginning of the revolution” in 2011, and was elected mayor last year.

He fled in July, when government forces of President Bashar al-Assad, backed by a Russian bombing campaign, began an offensive to retake the eastern parts of the city.

The mayor insisted on the need to oust the “criminal regime” of al-Assad.

“Some terrible crimes are being committed in Syria, over half a million casualties, more than 12 million of people displaced, these are terrible crimes and unfortunately the international community is still silent,” he lamented.

“To tell the truth, the idea of international law has been killed in Aleppo. This idea has been killed in Syria because of the despairing silence of the international community in front of these crimes,” Hasan said.

Labelling al-Assad as “the real leader of terrorism in Syria” and claiming that his troops “have not used a single bullet against Daesh [Islamic State] or even al-Qaeda,” the mayor denied the presence of Islamist forces among rebel holdouts in Aleppo.

“The Free Syrian Army are the ones who kicked out Daesh from tens of villages and towns in Syria.

“This the only group in Syria really fighting terrorism,” and as long as it controls “a few centimetres” of land it will resist and ultimately “be victorious,” Hasan vowed. (Reuters/ NAN)

(Edited by Julius Enehikhuere)