By Ali Cura
MOSCOW (AA) – The operation of evacuation of Aleppo was completed, Lt. Gen. Sergey Rudskoy, Russian General Staff’s operations department, said Friday.
“Regime forces are wiping out radical groups that refused to leave the city,” Rudskoy said in a statement.
He added the operation was “over”.
Rudskoy said the U.S. did not do its part on separating the moderate opposition from terrorists, adding: “But, the U.S. refused to do that on various excuses.”
He also said evacuation of Aleppo will create “all conditions” for peace settlement of the conflicts in Syria.
Earlier this week, Syrian opposition forces in eastern Aleppo reached a ceasefire deal with President Bashar al-Assad’s forces to evacuate civilians from the city.
Since then, at least 7,500 civilians have left Aleppo for safe areas in Idlib — which is located near the border with Turkey — according to Syrian opposition group officials.
Syria has been locked in a vicious civil war since early 2011, when the Bashar al-Assad regime cracked down on pro-democracy protests — which erupted as part of the “Arab Spring” uprisings — with unexpected ferocity.
Since then, more than a quarter of a million people have been killed and more than 10 million displaced across the war-battered country, according to the UN. The Syrian Center for Policy Research, however, put the death toll from the six-year conflict at more than 470,000 people.
