DOUMA: Aid workers have evacuated the first few ill patients from Syrian rebel bastion Eastern Ghouta under a deal struck after the UN said hundreds are in critical condition following a four-year government siege.

Three children and a man were loaded overnight into ambulances bound for hospitals in Damascus before being transported out past government lines that have held the region’s estimated 400,000 residents in a stranglehold since 2013.

A total of 29 emergency medical cases are expected to be evacuated under a deal with the government that saw reb­els release five workmen detained during fierce clashes with the army in March.

The four patients allowed out were a girl with haemophilia, a baby with the autoimmune disorder Guillain-Barre, a child with leukaemia, and a man in need of a kidney transplant, Red Crescent official Ahmed al-Saour said.

Eight-year-old Ingy, the girl with haemophilia, gave a broad smile as she boarded an ambulance, wearing a woolly hat and gloves against the cold.

In another ambulance, one-year-old Mohammed lay in the lap of a Red Crescent worker, his mother sitting beside them in a long black cloak and a veil showing only her eyes.

“The operation is a positive step which will bring some respite to the people of Eastern Ghouta,” said Intern­ational Committee of the Red Cross spokeswoman Ingy Sedky. “We hope these med­i­cal evacuations are only the beginning.”

The Syrian American Medical Soci­ety, another medical relief organisation, said the remainder of the 29 critical cases approved for evacuation should leave in the coming days. The dominant rebel faction in East­ern Ghouta, Jaish al-Islam (Army of Islam), said the rebels had agreed to free some of their prisoners in return for the evacuations.

“We have agreed to the release of a number of prisoners... in exchange for the evacuation of the most urgent huma­nitar­ian cases,” the group said a statement. The years of government siege have caused severe shortages in Eastern Ghouta, one of the last remaining rebel strongholds in Syria.

Published in Dawn, December 28th, 2017