Monday, February 20, 2017

Homs: Regime forces block UN aid entry to al Waer neighborhood



Syrian regime and allied militias blocked the entry of a UN-aid convoy delivering food rations and medicine to the besieged al-Waer neighborhood in central Homs city, residents said Sunday.

Abu Faisal, one of 60,000 people live in al-Waer, told Zaman al-Wasl that the regime snipers had targeted the convoy at the western gate of the neighborhood. One person reportedly wounded. Such an assault pushed the UN representative and Syrian Red Crescent to to delay aid delivery.

Regime warplanes have been carrying out airstrikes on al-Waer for two weeks that killed at least 30 people, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

Al-Waer, the last rebel-held neighborhood in the western city of Homs, had for months been spared much of the intense violence raging elsewhere in the country, as the regime tried to conclude an agreement with insurgents there.

Bombardment of the district resumed earlier this month, rescue workers and the Observatory reported.

Pro-Syrian government media outlets have said strikes were in response to rebels firing at residential areas of regime-held Homs neighborhoods.

Damascus has tried to conclude a deal in al-Waer that would see rebel fighters and their families leave the district and the government take over. Under similar local agreements in other parts of western Syria, rebels have left with light weapons and headed mostly for Idlib province.

The opposition says such agreements are part of a regime strategy to forcibly displace populations from opposition-held areas after years of siege and bombardment.

In September some 120 rebel fighters and their families left al-Waer in agreement with the government, but there have been no further reports of insurgents leaving. The Observatory estimates several thousand rebels remain there. (With agencies)

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