Nearly 150 civilians, most disabled or in need of urgent medical care, were evacuated overnight from a hospital in Aleppo’s Old City, the first major evacuation from the eastern sector, the International Committee of the Red Cross said on Thursday.
They had been trapped there for days by nearby fighting and as the front line moved closer. Eleven patients had died from lack of medication or been killed in crossfire before ICRC and Syrian Arab Red Crescent teams could reach them, it said.
The head of the ICRC delegation in Syria, Marianne Gasser, who is in the city, said in a statement on the evacuees: “Many of them cannot move and need special attention and care.”
Of the evacuated disabled, mental health patients and wounded from Dar Al-Safaa hospital in the Old City late on Wednesday, 118 patients were taken to three hospitals in the government-controlled west of Aleppo.