Fears raised over child evacuation
A senior UN official said he fears children waiting to be evacuated from the besieged rebel-held Eastern Ghouta area near the Syrian capital, Damascus, are being used as bargaining chips.
The UN's humanitarian co-ordinator, Jan Egeland, told the BBC he believed that rebels had agreed to free government workers in exchange for the children.
Another 12 patients were evacuated on Wednesday, following four on Tuesday. Thirteen more urgent cases were expected to be evacuated yesterday.
News of the latest evacuations from the Eastern Ghouta came in a tweet from the Syrian American Medical Society (SAMS), a medical relief organisation that supports hospitals in rebel-held Syria.
A total of 29 emergency medical cases are expected to be evacuated under a deal with the government that saw rebels release 26 individuals, including workers detained during fierce clashes with the army in March.
The numbers are still a far cry from the nearly 500 patients in the Damascus suburb the UN said weeks ago would die if they did not urgently receive better treatment.
"Yesterday we evacuated 12 patients together with their family members, the majority of them are children," International Committee of the Red Cross spokeswoman Ingy Sedky said.
At the Syrian Red Crescent headquarters in Douma, an AFP correspondent saw the latest group of evacuees waiting for ambulances to pick them up.
Among them was Abdel Rahman, a seven-month-old baby with respiratory assistance in his mother's arms. A Red Crescent worker tried to make another baby smile.
"Most of them suffer from cancer, chronic diseases and heart diseases," Sedky said, adding that the evacuees were transferred to Damascus.
From the list of 500 urgent cases announced in November at least 16 have already died for lack of medical assistance.
Around 400,000 people live in the Eastern Ghouta area on the edge of the Syrian capital.
The enclave is controlled by rebels, the dominant faction among them Jaish al-Islam (Army of Islam), and has been under siege by the government for four years.
Jan Egeland, head of the Norwegian Refugee Council and currently a UN special envoy for humanitarian access in Syria, was critical of the deal that allowed the patients to leave.
The agreement between the rebels and the government was reached with support from Turkey, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, and led to the release of 26 men held by Jaish al-Islam rebels.
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