MOSCOW, June 17. /TASS/. A group of militants has blocked a convoy of 17 vans carrying school graduates from the Idlib de-escalation zone to the city of Hama controlled by the Syrian government, Alexander Shcherbitsky, chief of the Russian Center for Reconciliation of the Opposing Parties in Syria, said on Wednesday.
"On June 17, the motor convoy carrying schoolchildren from the Idlib de-escalation zone was expected to arrive in the city of Hama via the Trumba checkpoint. However, on the southern outskirts of Nayrab, Idlib province, a group of militants from the Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham terrorist group (banned in Russia - TASS) blocked the convoy of 17 vans carrying school graduates," Shcherbitsky said.
According to the Russian defense official, some young people and their parents attempted to walk toward the checkpoint of Syria’s Armed Forces, located near the settlement of Trumba, but the attempt was cut short by the militants threatening to use arms.
Shcherbitsky explained that the Syrian government had reached an agreement with local authorities in the Idlib de-escalation zone to grant the high school students an opportunity to receive high school diplomas and do entry exams for Syrian universities. Nevertheless, radical groups hampered the implementation of those accords in the south of the de-escalation zone.
"Thus, graduates of Idlib schools were deprived of the possibility granted by the Syrian government to obtain internationally standardized documents detailing their secondary and higher education. The radical groups’ actions are clearly aimed at undermining the peace process and at depriving the young people of a chance for a better future," he stressed.
Nevertheless, Shcherbitsky added, more than 700 graduates of Syrian high schools were able to arrive from the areas not controlled by the Syrian government in the city of Aleppo through two new checkpoints of Aleppo and Trumba. With assistance from the Russian Center for Reconciliation of the Opposing Parties, they came to the city of Aleppo, completely retaken from militants in 2016.
The Russian reconciliation center continues to fulfill assigned tasks after the completion of the military campaign in Syria. The center’s officers regularly travel around the country's liberated areas to assess the humanitarian situation. The main efforts of the Russian military are now focused on assistance to the refugees returning to their homes and evacuation of civilians from de-escalation zones.