The Guardian, 14 December 2016 – Iran-backed militias are preventing civilians and opposition fighters from leaving the besieged districts of east Aleppo as Russia struggles to convince the Assad government and allied militants to abide by a ceasefire agreement.
Shelling of the besieged districts resumed on Wednesday morning despite the agreement brokered by Turkish intelligence and the Russian military on Tuesday that would have offered a respite to tens of thousands of trapped civilians.

It was unclear on Wednesday when residents would be allowed to leave east Aleppo and whether the deal would hold. Turkey’s state-run Anadolu agency quoted the head of the Turkish Red Crescent as saying nearly 1,000 people from east Aleppo were being held at an Iranian militia checkpoint.
Rebels inside east Aleppo said they would support the agreement but Iranian-backed militias on the ground, which led the assault into east Aleppo, were blocking it.
“The sectarian militias want to resume the massacre in Aleppo and the world has to act to prevent this sectarian slaughter led by Iran,” said Bassam Mustafa, a member of the political council of Noureddine Zinki, one of the main rebel groups in east Aleppo. “The opposition will continue to abide by the agreement.”
Yasser al-Youssef, a spokesman for the group, said Russia was attempting to convince the Assad government to accept the ceasefire. The Turkish foreign minister, Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu, said discussions were ongoing with Russia and Iran to continue the planned evacuations.
Russia and Turkey negotiated the agreement apparently without the Assad regime’s knowledge. The Syrian military initially said it had no knowledge of the deal before backtracking and saying the evacuations would begin on Wednesday at 5am Aleppo time. The evacuation of rebel-held eastern Aleppo has however yet to begin.
The confusion over the deal, which imposed a ceasefire at 6pm local time on Tuesday, highlighted the splits and competing interests of Assad’s supporters, which include Russia, Iran and Iran-backed militias on the ground, who were on Tuesday implicated by the United Nations in execution-style shootings of civilians in opposition areas.

Residents said intense shelling had resumed on Wednesday in their shrinking, besieged enclave, where they had endured what the UN described as a brutal “meltdown of humanity” as forces loyal to Assad rampaged through newly reclaimed districts.
Russia said the renewed shelling was a response to rebel attacks.
The French foreign minister, Jean-Marc Ayrault, said confusion surrounding the evacuation showed it was imperative to have UN observers to manage the process. “France wants the presence of UN observers on the ground and humanitarian organizations like the Red Cross must intervene,” he told France 2 television.
There had been conflicting accounts of the expected start times for the evacuation. A military official in the pro-Assad alliance had said the evacuation was due to start at 5am (3am GMT), while opposition officials said they had been expecting a first group of wounded people to leave earlier.
However, none had left by dawn, according to a Reuters witness at the agreed point of departure. Twenty buses were waiting with their engines running but showed no sign of moving into Aleppo’s eastern districts.
“There is certainly a delay,” said Rami Abdulrahman, director of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a war monitor. The pro-opposition Orient TV cited its correspondent as saying the plan might be delayed until Thursday.