UN, Iranian officers secure Syrian rebels

A joint team of UN observers and Iranian Revolutionary Guards officers in civilian dress began evacuating some 2,000 Syrian rebels and their families from the Old City of Homs on Wednesday, May 7, so ending a cruel two-year siege. The rebels’ exodus from their last remaining stronghold represented another major victory for Syrian President Bashar Assad. As a rebel on his way out put it to Western reporters, “The rest of the world failed us.”

 

For two years, the armed Syrian opposition to Assad held onto Homs as the capital of their revolution, against the Syrian army’s ultimatum “to starve of surrender” and the most brutal assaults. Assad’s army bombarded the Old City of Homs with chemical weapons and barrel bombs for two years. Syrian tanks and heavy artillery methodically destroyed homes, street-by-street, house-by-house, driving the rebels and their families into underground cellars and tunnels, without food, water or medicine.

Read More: Homs falls to Assad: UN, Iranian officers secure Syrian rebels’ exit after Iranian hostages freed in Aleppo.