Aleppo, Syria / Beirut - As the four-month
siege of eastern Aleppo neared its end, some survivors trudged
in the rain past dead bodies to the government-held west or the
few districts still in rebel hands.
Others stayed in their homes and awaited the Syrian army's
arrival.
For all of them, fear of arrest, conscription or summary
execution had added to the daily terror of bombardment.
"People are saying the troops have lists of families of
fighters and are asking them if they had sons with the
terrorists. (They are) then either left or shot and left to
die," said Abu Malek al-Shamali in Seif al-Dawla, one of the
last rebel-held neighbourhoods.
The United Nations said it had reports that Syrian
government troops and their Iraqi militia allies had killed
civilians in eastern Aleppo, including 82 people in four
different neighbourhoods in the last few days.
Speaking from a small area still under rebel control, father
of five Abu Ibrahim, said he knew of two families executed by
the advancing militias that have formed the vanguard of the
assault on Syria's second city.
The United Nations also said it was concerned about reports
that hundreds of young men leaving rebel-held territory had been
detained.
President Bashar al-Assad's opponents have accused the
government of mass arrests and forced conscription. The
government has denied this and accused rebels of compelling men
to fight in their ranks.
On Sunday foreign journalists were invited to a ceremony
where Syria's army enlisted 220 men, including former rebels and
others from areas captured by the government.
"You have been recalled to obligatory service," Brigadier
Habib Safia told the men in the military police headquarters in
a government-held Aleppo district.
One of the men, Mohammed Hilal, in his 20s, said he and some
comrades had escaped from the east along with more than 60
families and that he was ready to join the army.
Wiped off the world
Those still trapped in eastern Aleppo have been using social
media to distribute messages they feared would be their last.
"This is a message from someone saying farewell and who
could face death or arrest at any time," a medic working in
Aleppo wrote via the Whatsapp messaging service.
"Trapped from all sides, death comes from the sky in barrels
... Remember what you had in Aleppo, that there was a city
called Aleppo wiped off the map and from history by the world."
Abu Yousef, in his thirties, said he and his family fled
bombardments, tanks and executions in his home neighbourhood of
Bustan al-Qasr.
"Thanks to god, we are still alive ... the regime is
constantly bombing us. My two children are injured, I am
injured. The regime wants to kill us all. We are very afraid,"
he said.
"You tell me 'may God protect you'. I don't want God to
protect us, we want a solution! We want a cessation of
hostilities. We want someone to get us out of here. It's enough.
People are dying," he said.
The UN has called for international oversight for civilians
and rebel fighters as the government takes over.
"The only way to alleviate the deep foreboding and suspicion
that massive crimes may be under way both within Aleppo, and in
relation to some of those who fled or were captured, whether
fighters or civilians, is for there to be monitoring by external
bodies, such as the UN," UN human rights office spokesman Rupert
Colville said.
Children's charity War Child said: "What we are witnessing
in Aleppo is a humanitarian catastrophe of historic proportions,
bearing comparison to infamous disasters of the past - such as
Srebrenica and Guernica."
It's hell
East Aleppo's civil defence rescue organisation, which
pulled many hundreds of dead and injured from rubble over years
of the war, told Reuters rescue services had stopped.
"Our machinery and equipment is all broken. We have nothing
left ... We are working with our hands just to get people from
under the rubble," said Ibrahim Abu Laith, an official from the
civil defence group also known as the White Helmets.
The civil defence wrote on its Twitter account on Tuesday it
could no longer keep track of the numbers of dead.
"There is no total number of casualties in besieged Aleppo
today, all streets and destroyed buildings are full with dead
bodies. It's hell."
With hospitals bombed out of service, aid stocks exhausted
and a brutal bombing campaign in recent weeks, people in east
Aleppo are desperate.
"People, even those wanted (by the regime) have started to
flee to the regime from the intensity of the shelling, hunger,
cold and amount of injuries which are not treated, in addition
to the corpses in the streets ... Planes and artillery are
hitting strongly places where civilians are gathering," the
medic said in his message.
UN human rights chief Zeid Ra'ad al Hussein warned that what
we are seeing now in Aleppo could happen to populations of other
towns outside government control such as Douma, Raqqa and Idlib.
"The crushing of Aleppo, the immeasurably terrifying toll on
its people, the bloodshed, the wanton slaughter of men, women
and children, the destruction - and we are nowhere near the end
of this cruel conflict," Zeid said.