Aleppo was home to a majority of an estimated 80,000 ethnic Armenian who lived in Syria before the outbreak of its bloody civil war in 2011. The once thriving community is believed to have shrunk by more than half since then.
The current number of Syrian Armenians remaining in Aleppo is not known. According to some estimates, it may be as high as 10,000. One local Armenian, a 66-year-old man, was fatally wounded while fleeing the city over the weekend.
“Currently, people are in a state of waiting, they are cautious,” Zarmig Boghigian, the editor of the Aleppo-based Armenian-language newspaper Kantsasar, told RFE/RL’s Armenian Service on Monday.
“There is approximately 12-14 hours of electricity a day,” she said, adding that most shops are still open while local schools remain closed.
In Boghigian’s words, the city has been rocked by airstrikes but there is no fighting in residential areas. One such strike, apparently carried out by Russian or Syrian government warplanes, blew out the windows of her apartment.
Syria - A Syrian opposition fighter shoots in the air in downtown Aleppo, November 30, 2024.
In Yerevan, the Office of the High Commissioner for Diaspora Affairs said, meanwhile, that evacuating Aleppo Armenians to Armenia is impossible in these circumstances.
“Right now, even [Syrian] government forces have no access to Aleppo, and the possibility of evacuation is almost non-existent,” said Hovannes Aleksanian, a spokeswoman for the Armenian government agency.
Aleksanian added that Yerevan will respond if the Armenian Embassy in Damascus and the Syrian government “see such a possibility at some point.”
Armenia also had a consulate in Aleppo until the rebel takeover. According to the Armenian Foreign Ministry, the consul, Ara Avetisian, travelled to Damascus on November 26, the day before the lightning offensive launched by the Islamist group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, and was unable to return to Aleppo due to the fighting.
Just as the Turkish-backed rebels entered the city on Friday the Armenian military evacuated a small contingent of its sappers, medics and other noncombat personnel deployed in and around Aleppo since 2019.