Beirut: Hundreds of rebel fighters and civilians, including small children swaddled in thick blankets, have been transported out of war-ravaged Aleppo in heavy snow as the evacuation of former rebel strongholds enters its final phase.
Scenes of buses slowly driving out of Aleppo on Wednesday in a shroud of white marked an end to what has been one of the most brutal chapters in Syria's civil war.
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Western Aleppo evacuees arrive in Syria
Evacuees from al-Rashideen in the southwest edge of Aleppo arrive in Idlib, Syria.
The departures from Aleppo pave the way for Syria's President Bashar al-Assad to assume full control there, after more than four years of fighting over Syria's largest city. It marks the most significant victory for Assad since an uprising against his family's four-decade rule swept the country in 2011.
Earlier the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said Assad took control of Aleppo city on Wednesday after the last batch of fighters was evacuated.
The evacuations were set in motion last week after Syria's opposition agreed to surrender its last footholds in eastern Aleppo. Since then, about 25,000 fighters and civilians have been bussed out, according to the United Nations. On Wednesday, buses began evacuating the last rebels and civilians, an estimated 3000 people.
By nightfall, 25 buses carrying hundreds of people had driven in a rare snow storm from eastern Aleppo to opposition-held areas in the countryside near the city, said opposition journalist Ahmad "Primo", who was monitoring arrivals at the main drop-off point in the Rashideen district.
The evacuees got off the buses wearing thick jackets and carrying sacks with belongings. One woman dressed in a black robe and face veil carried a small child swaddled in a heavy yellow blanket. A man held a toddler whose face was peeking out from under a blanket shielding him from falling snow.
The opposition's Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said on Wednesday night that with the evacuation of the last group of rebels from eastern Aleppo, Assad was in full control, save for a few positions on the western outskirts of the city that were still in rebel hands.
The International Committee of the Red Cross said patients and all those requiring medical care had been evacuated from the last hospital in the city's east.
Pro-government forces repeatedly struck medical facilities in rebel-held neighbourhoods in their push to expel the opposition from Aleppo this year. In November, the UN said it believed there were no more functioning medical facilities in the eastern part of the city.
Wednesday's bus movements came after evacuations had been suspended for 24 hours, one of several snags and delays since the first bus convoys left the city last week.
Frequent disagreements have erupted between the rebels and the government, as well as among rebel groups, over compliance with a wider deal that also includes evacuations from two rebel-besieged villages, al-Foua and Kafraya.
It's unclear if any UN observers are on the ground in eastern Aleppo on Wednesday - two days after a UN Security Council resolution approved their urgent deployment.
Deputy UN spokesman Farhan Haq said some UN staff were present at a Syrian government checkpoint outside Aleppo's eastern sector, but he couldn't say for sure if any observers had been let into the onetime rebel-held area.
Elsewhere in northern Syria, fighting intensified in the Islamic State- controlled town of al-Bab, where Turkish troops and Turkey-backed Syrian opposition fighters have been trying to drive the extremists out.
Turkey's state television said 10 Turkish soldiers were killed Wednesday in three separate suicide attacks in al-Bab.
The United Nations Security Council has approved the delivery of humanitarian aid across borders and conflict lines in Syria for another year, while it's General Assembly has approved the establishment of a body to prepare war crimes cases.
AP, Reuters
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