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Anti-government rebels burned five buses Sunday that were supposed to be used for an evacuation near Idlib in Syria, stalling a deal to allow thousands to depart Aleppo, where evacuees crammed into buses for hours, waiting to move.
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In return for the evacuation of fighters, their families and other civilians from Aleppo, the mostly Sunni anti-government forces had agreed that people in the villages of al-Foua and Kefraya, Shiite villages they had besieged near Idlib, should also be allowed to leave.
Videos posted on social media showed bearded men with guns cheering and shouting, "God is great" after torching the green buses before they were able to reach the villages. State media said "armed terrorists" from groups fighting President Bashar Assad, had carried out the attack.
The Beirut-based Mayadeen television said the Nusra Front, which has ties to al-Qaida, was to blame for the attack on the buses. Other anti-government groups also blamed Nusra fighters and condemned the attack, Al-Arabiya reported. The incident cast doubts on the evacuation agreement as a whole.
However, Russian President Vladimir Putin, Assad's main foreign ally, and Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan, the anti-government groups' main supporter, agreed by telephone Sunday that the disruptions must be quickly overcome, sources in Erdogan's office told Reuters.
One of Assad’s allies, the Lebanese group Hezbollah, said responsibility for the delay in the evacuation falls with "terrorists and their state sponsors."
Syrian state television, citing its correspondent in the city, said buses had started to leave east Aleppo where over 15,000 people had gathered in a square to wait, many after a night of sleeping in the streets in freezing temperatures.
Aleppo had been divided between government and anti-government areas in the nearly six-year-long war, but a rapid advance by the Syrian army and its allies began in mid-November following months of intense airstrikes, forcing them out of territory within a matter of weeks.
According to Syria's al-Ikhbariya TV news, about 1,200 civilians would initially be evacuated from east Aleppo and a similar number from the two villages.
A document cited by al-Manar television and seen by Reuters said the entire deal would see 2,500 residents leave the Shiite villages al-Foua and Kefraya in two batches, in exchange for the evacuation of people from east Aleppo in two corresponding batches.
Following this, another 1,500 would leave al-Foua and Kefraya in exchange for the evacuation of 1,500 from the towns of Madaya and Zabadani near Lebanon, which are under anti-government groups' control but surrounded by government-allied forces.
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Once evacuees from the villages have safely arrived in government areas, Aleppo fighters and more of their family members will be allowed to leave, in return for subsequent batches of people departing al-Foua and Kefraya, the document said.
Those people will be taken to districts controlled by anti-government forces in the countryside west of Aleppo. Turkey has said Aleppo evacuees could also be housed in a camp to be constructed near the Turkish border to the north.
The United Nations Security Council agreed Sunday on a compromise draft resolution on U.N. officials monitoring the evacuations from Aleppo. It will vote on the text on Monday. Russia said it would veto an earlier draft by France, circulating an alternative version.
Russian Ambassador Vitaly Churkin said, "I think we have a good text, we agreed to vote tomorrow morning." The six-year Syrian conflict has uprooted half of Syria's 22 million people and killed more than 400,000.
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