Residents of Syria's Shia villages tell of pain and abandonment
(CNN)After a long and bloody battle, scenes of the most vulnerable Syrians streaming out of a devastated eastern Aleppo have been closely watched around the world.
Some 60 kilometers away, a lesser known evacuation was also taking place in the Shia villages of Foua and Kefraya where the population, which is mostly loyal to Bashar al-Assad, has been besieged by rebels for the past 21 months.
This week, Batool Aswad, 20, was one of the 750 people who took the green buses parked at the entrance of Foua, in the suburbs of Idlib, and left her hometown.
While only the elderly, injured and sick were allowed to go, Aswad says she was given an exception because she was accompanying her diabetic aunt.
"I had to leave my mother, siblings, my 5-month old baby sister, all behind," she told CNN in a WhatsApp voice memo after reaching their first stop in government-held Aleppo district.
More: http://www.cnn.com/2016/12/21/middleeast/syria-shia-villages/index.html
Towns supportive of Assad.
