An operation to evacuate civilians and fighters from rebel-held eastern Aleppo has brought out 37,500 people since late last week and the goal is to complete the process by Wednesday, Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said.

But it is hard to know if that goal is realistic, given the problems that have beset the evacuation plan so far, and the wide variation in estimates of how many had left and how many still remained. The International Committee of the Red Cross put the number evacuated since Thursday at only 25,000.

A rebel official in Turkey told Reuters that even after thousands had left on Monday, only about half of the civilians who wanted to leave had done so.

The insurgents would only leave once all the civilians who wanted to go had departed, the rebel said. The ceasefire and evacuation agreement allows them to carry personal weapons but not heavier arms.

Estimates of the number of people waiting for evacuation range from a few thousand to tens of thousands.

The United Nations said Syria had authorized the world body to send 20 more staff to east Aleppo who would monitor the evacuation.

A U.N. official said 750 people had been evacuated from the two besieged government villages of Foua and Kefraya, which government forces had insisted must be included in the deal to bring people out of Aleppo.

The evacuations are part of a ceasefire arrangement that ends four years of fighting in Aleppo, once Syria's most populous city.

Conditions for those being evacuated are grim, with evacuees waiting for convoys of buses in freezing winter temperatures. An aid worker said that some evacuees had reported children had died during the long, cold wait.

In government-held parts of Aleppo, the mood was very different.

A large crowd thronged to a sports hall in the city, waving Syrian flags and dancing to patriotic music, a large portrait of President Bashar al-Assad hanging on one wall, in a celebration of the rebels' defeat in the city that was broadcast live on state television.

The rebel withdrawal from Aleppo after a series of rapid advances by the army and allied Shi'ite militias including Hezbollah since late November has brought Assad his biggest victory of the nearly six-year-old war.

However, despite the capture of Aleppo and progress against insurgents near Damascus, the fighting is far from over, with large areas remaining in rebel control in the northwestern countryside and in the far south.

The jihadist group Islamic State also controls swathes of territory in the deserts and Euphrates river basin in eastern Syria.

The foreign minister of Iran, one of Assad's main backers, said he hoped an overall ceasefire agreement could be reached for Syria.

Speaking at a meeting with the foreign ministers of Russia and Turkey in Moscow to discuss the future of Syria, Mohammad Javad Zarif said there was no military solution for the Syrian conflict, only a political one. Russia and Iran back Assad while Turkey has backed some rebel groups.

The talks, aimed at giving fresh impetus for a solution in Aleppo, went ahead despite the killing of Russia's ambassador to Ankara by a gunman on Monday.

U.N. Syria mediator Staffan de Mistura intends to convene peace talks in Geneva on Feb. 8.

Assad is backed by Russian air power and Shi'ite militias including Lebanon's Hezbollah movement and Iraq's Harakat al-Nujaba. The mostly Sunni rebels include groups supported by Turkey, the United States and Gulf monarchies.

For four years, the city was split between a rebel-held eastern sector and the government-held western districts. During the summer, the army and its allies besieged the rebel sector before using intense bombardment and ground assaults to retake it in recent months.</s>NEW YORK (AP) — Does it feel like forever since we lost the style, splendor and scandals of "Downton Abbey?"

Well, dust off your jewels and put up the kettle because the twists and turns at...</s>An operation to evacuate civilians and fighters from rebel-held eastern Aleppo has brought out 37,500 people since late last week and the goal is to complete the process by Wednesday, Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said.

But it is hard to know if that goal is realistic, given the problems that have beset the evacuation plan so far, and the wide variation in estimates of how many had left and how many still remained. The International Committee of the Red Cross put the number evacuated since Thursday at only 25,000.

A rebel official in Turkey told Reuters that even after thousands had left on Monday, only about half of the civilians who wanted to leave had done so.

The insurgents would only leave once all the civilians who wanted to go had departed, the rebel said. The ceasefire and evacuation agreement allows them to carry personal weapons but not heavier arms.

Estimates of the number of people waiting for evacuation range from a few thousand to tens of thousands.

The United Nations said Syria had authorized the world body to send 20 more staff to east Aleppo who would monitor the evacuation.

A U.N. official said 750 people had been evacuated from the two besieged government villages of Foua and Kefraya, which government forces had insisted must be included in the deal to bring people out of Aleppo.

The evacuations are part of a ceasefire arrangement that ends four years of fighting in Aleppo, once Syria's most populous city.

Conditions for those being evacuated are grim, with evacuees waiting for convoys of buses in freezing winter temperatures. An aid worker said that some evacuees had reported children had died during the long, cold wait.

In government-held parts of Aleppo, the mood was very different.

A large crowd thronged to a sports hall in the city, waving Syrian flags and dancing to patriotic music, a large portrait of President Bashar al-Assad hanging on one wall, in a celebration of the rebels' defeat in the city that was broadcast live on state television.

The rebel withdrawal from Aleppo after a series of rapid advances by the army and allied Shi'ite militias including Hezbollah since late November has brought Assad his biggest victory of the nearly six-year-old war.

However, despite the capture of Aleppo and progress against insurgents near Damascus, the fighting is far from over, with large areas remaining in rebel control in the northwestern countryside and in the far south.

The jihadist group Islamic State also controls swathes of territory in the deserts and Euphrates river basin in eastern Syria.

The foreign minister of Iran, one of Assad's main backers, said he hoped an overall ceasefire agreement could be reached for Syria.

Speaking at a meeting with the foreign ministers of Russia and Turkey in Moscow to discuss the future of Syria, Mohammad Javad Zarif said there was no military solution for the Syrian conflict, only a political one. Russia and Iran back Assad while Turkey has backed some rebel groups.

The talks, aimed at giving fresh impetus for a solution in Aleppo, went ahead despite the killing of Russia's ambassador to Ankara by a gunman on Monday.

U.N. Syria mediator Staffan de Mistura intends to convene peace talks in Geneva on Feb. 8.

Assad is backed by Russian air power and Shi'ite militias including Lebanon's Hezbollah movement and Iraq's Harakat al-Nujaba. The mostly Sunni rebels include groups supported by Turkey, the United States and Gulf monarchies.

For four years, the city was split between a rebel-held eastern sector and the government-held western districts. During the summer, the army and its allies besieged the rebel sector before using intense bombardment and ground assaults to retake it in recent months.</s>BEIRUT/MOSCOW — As President Bashar al-Assad’s army closed in on the last rebel enclave in Aleppo on Tuesday, Russia, Iran and Turkey said they were ready to help broker a Syrian peace deal.

The Syrian army used loudspeakers to broadcast warnings to insurgents that it was poised to enter their rapidly diminishing area during the day and told them to speed up their evacuation of the city.

Complete control of Aleppo would be a major victory for Assad against rebels who have defied him in Syria’s most populous city for four years.

Ministers from Russia, Iran and Turkey adopted a declaration they called the “Moscow Declaration,” which set out the principles that any peace agreement should follow. At talks in the Russian capital, they also backed an expanded ceasefire in Syria.

“Iran, Russia and Turkey are ready to facilitate the drafting of an agreement, which is already being negotiated, between the Syrian government and the opposition, and to become its guarantors,” the declaration said.

The move underlines the growing strength of Moscow’s links with Tehran and Ankara, despite the murder on Monday of Russia’s ambassador to Turkey, and reflects Russian President Vladimir Putin’s desire to cement his influence in the Middle East and beyond.

Russia and Iran back Assad while Turkey has backed some rebel groups.

Putin said last week that he and his Turkish counterpart Tayyip Erdogan were working to organize a new series of Syrian peace negotiations without the involvement of the United States or the United Nations.

For his part, U.N. Syria mediator Staffan de Mistura intends to convene peace talks in Geneva on Feb. 8.

In Syria, an operation to evacuate civilians and fighters from rebel-held eastern Aleppo has now brought out 37,500 people since late last week, Turkey said. Turkish and Russian ministers estimated the evacuation would be complete within two days.

But it is hard to know if that goal is realistic, given the problems that have beset the evacuation so far, and the wide variation in estimates of how many have left and how many remain. The International Committee of the Red Cross put the number evacuated since the operation began on Thursday at only 25,000.

A rebel official in Turkey told Reuters that even after thousands left on Monday, only about half of the civilians who wanted to leave had done so.

Insurgent fighters would only leave once all the civilians who wanted to go had departed, the rebel said. The ceasefire and evacuation agreement allows rebels to carry personal weapons but not heavier arms.

Estimates of the number of people waiting for evacuation range from a few thousand to tens of thousands.

The United Nations said Syria had authorized the world body to send 20 more staff to east Aleppo who would monitor the evacuation.

A U.N. official said 750 people had been evacuated from the two besieged Shi’ite villages of Foua and Kefraya, which government forces had insisted must be included in the deal to bring people out of Aleppo.

The evacuations are part of a ceasefire arrangement that ends fighting in Aleppo, once Syria’s most populous city.

Conditions for those being evacuated are grim, with evacuees waiting for convoys of buses in freezing winter temperatures. An aid worker said that some evacuees had reported that children had died during the long, cold wait.

In government-held parts of Aleppo, the mood was very different.

A large crowd thronged to a sports hall in the city, waving Syrian flags and dancing to patriotic music, a large portrait of Assad hanging on one wall, in a celebration of the rebels’ defeat in the city that was broadcast live on state television.

The rebel withdrawal from Aleppo after a series of rapid advances by the army and allied Shi’ite militias including Hezbollah since late November has brought Assad his biggest victory of the nearly 6-year-old war.

However, despite the capture of Aleppo and progress against insurgents near Damascus, the fighting is far from over, with large areas remaining in rebel control in the northwestern countryside and in the far south.

The jihadist group Islamic State also controls swathes of territory in the deserts and Euphrates river basin in eastern Syria.

Assad is backed by Russian air power and Shi’ite militias including Lebanon’s Hezbollah movement and Iraq’s Harakat al-Nujaba. The mostly Sunni rebels include groups supported by Turkey, the United States and Gulf monarchies.

For four years, the city was split between a rebel-held eastern sector and the government-held western districts. During the summer, the army and its allies besieged the rebel sector before using intense bombardment and ground assaults to retake it in recent months.</s>A rebel official based in Turkey told Reuters that only about half of the civilians who wanted to leave Aleppo had done so after the departure of thousands of people on Monday.

The insurgents would only leave once all the civilians who wanted to had done so, the rebel said. The ceasefire and evacuation agreement allows them to carry personal weapons but not heavier arms.

Late on Monday, Turkey said 20,000 people had left the rebel-held pocket in the south of Aleppo in evacuations on Thursday and Monday. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a war monitor, said 15,000 had gone.

Estimates of the number of people still waiting for evacuation on convoys of buses range from a few thousand to tens of thousands. The route out of Aleppo runs 5 km (3 miles) to the rebel-held district of al-Rashideen, just beyond the city's southwestern limit.

Civilians are also being evacuated from two mostly Shi'ite Muslim villages near Idlib that have been besieged by rebels for years and taken to Aleppo as part of the deal that allowed the departure of insurgents from the city.

The Hezbollah military media unit reported that eight more buses of evacuees from al-Foua and Kefraya departed at dawn on Tuesday.

The rebel withdrawal from Aleppo after a series of rapid advances by the army and allied Shi'ite militias including Hezbollah since late November has brought President Bashar al-Assad his biggest victory of the civil war.

However, despite the capture of Aleppo and progress against insurgents near Damascus, the fighting is still far from over, with large areas remaining in rebel control in the northwestern countryside and in the far south.

The jihadist group Islamic State also controls swathes of territory in the deserts and Euphrates river basin in eastern Syria.</s>Some 25,000 people have been evacuated from the rebel-held enclave of Aleppo since Thursday, including 15,000 on Monday and 10,000 last Thursday, the International Committee of the Red Cross said on Tuesday.

Teams from the ICRC and the Syrian Arab Red Crescent, who are leading the evacuation, were "working through the night" on Monday, ICRC spokeswoman Krista Armstrong told Reuters.</s>BEIRUT — Syrian government forces threatened Tuesday to storm the last opposition holdout in Aleppo, potentially complicating an internationally supported effort to evacuate thousands of civilians still trapped in the city.

The media of the Lebanese Hezbollah militia, an ally of President Bashar Assad that is fighting in Aleppo, said Syrian troops have issued their last call for people to leave the sliver of territory in the city's eastern districts still in the hands of opposition forces.

As many as 25,000 people have been evacuated from the area since Thursday, Robert Mardini, regional director of the International Committee of the Red Cross, said on Twitter.

Evacuations have been taking place since last week as part of an agreement brokered by Russia and Turkey, but disruptions have complicated the effort as thousands are still waiting to be bussed to the rebel-held province to the west.

The deal — seen as the only way to avoid a bloodbath — has surrendered to Assad's government the eastern districts of the city that rebel fighters have held since 2012. That represents a major victory for the Syrian leader and his allies, including Russia and Iran.

Pro-government fighters, including militiamen from Hezbollah and Iran, temporarily halted the evacuations to demand that residents of two nearby Shiite villages under siege by rebels also be evacuated. Islamist rebels later burned those evacuation buses temporarily complicating the entire evacuation plan.

Opposition Syrians accuse government forces and allied militiamen of robbing and even executing a number of people as they have moved into the parts of eastern Aleppo once held by the rebels.

At the United Nations, the Security Council voted Monday to deploy international observers to monitor the evacuation routes in Aleppo, ending months of deadlock over the fate of the city as government forces closed in.

France's envoy to the Security Council said he hoped the resolution would prevent Aleppo from turning into another Srebrenica, where thousands of Bosnian men and boys were massacred in 1995 as the town fell to Serb forces. But the text of the resolution allowed five days for the observers to arrive, suggesting that the mission may not get off the ground until the evacuation is complete.

The city has seen some of the fiercest fighting of Syria's war. For much of it, Aleppo's eastern districts had been the rebels' most important stronghold.

Thousands of people remain camped out in what is left of the rebels' Aleppo enclave — its streets shattered beyond recognition by shelling.

Photographs from the area on Sunday night showed fires on the streets as residents tried to keep warm. Temperatures drop below freezing at night, and many people are sleeping on sidewalks and in abandoned buildings.

Several residents disembarking from the evacuation buses in the early hours of Monday were bundled up in coats. Many were exhausted, frustrated and in tears, said Ahmad Dbis, a doctor coordinating a team welcoming the evacuees.

"These people came out of hell, but they are indignant at their treatment," Dbis said. "They keep asking why people didn't help them in Aleppo."

The U.N. children's agency said Monday that 47 children had arrived safely from an orphanage, some of them in critical condition because of injuries or dehydration.

As an addendum to the Aleppo evacuation deal, 10 buses carried civilians away from two Shiite villages long besieged by rebels — Fouaa and Kefraya in Idlib - on Monday morning, according to the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights and the pan-Arab Mayadeen television station.</s>BEIRUT (AP) — Delays hampered the last evacuations of Syrian rebels and civilians from what is left of the opposition’s enclave in Aleppo as its residents waited on Wednesday for the arrival of 20 U.N. observers meant to monitor the final exodus from the city.

Some 3,000 rebel fighters and civilians stood outside in harsh wintry conditions overnight, waiting in vain for to board what may be the last convoy out of the enclave. Activists circulated photos on social media of families huddled around fires amid the sleet and snow. By midday, temperatures in the city hovered around freezing.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which monitors the conflict through a network of activists on the ground, said 60 buses were waiting to leave eastern Aleppo on Wednesday with the last of the evacuees — the final step that surrenders the Syrian opposition foothold in the war-torn city to the government.

Rebels and the government traded blame for the delay.

Syrian state media said on Tuesday evening that “differences among terrorist groups” were holding up the evacuations from Aleppo and from two rebel-besieged Shiite villages in the country’s north, Foua and Kfarya. The government calls all armed opposition fighters terrorists.

The rebels are supposed to allow the evacuation of the sick and wounded from the two villages as part of a cease-fire deal reached last week to ensure the evacuation of eastern, rebel-held part of the city of Aleppo.

Ward Furati, spokesman for Aleppo’s Fastaqim rebel faction, said fighters in Aleppo “won’t leave until the security of all the civilians has been fully guaranteed.”

Opposition media activist Ahmad Primo said the government’s side was demanding to complete the evacuations from Foua and Kfarya before it would allow buses out of Aleppo.

The International Committee of the Red Cross, which is overseeing the operations, could not be reached for comment. On Tuesday, the ICRC said it has evacuated 25,000 people from the city since operations began last week, but the Observatory says the tally is closer to 17,000.

The Observatory also said 21 buses are still waiting to evacuate the sick and wounded from the rebel-besieged Shiite villages of Foua and Kfarya.

Also Tuesday, the U.N. humanitarian aid agency said Syria’s government authorized U.N. plans to send about 20 staffers to monitor evacuations from eastern Aleppo. It was not immediately unclear if the U.N. monitors would arrive on Tuesday.

Elsewhere in northern Syria, fighting between the Islamic State group on one side, and Turkish forces and Syrian opposition forces on the other, killed three Turkish soldiers, according to the state Anadolu Agency.

The report cited unnamed military sources as saying that 11 Turkish soldiers were also wounded in the fighting for the IS-held town of al-Bab on Wednesday, including one who was reported to be in critical condition. The agency reported intense clashes near a hospital in the town, saying the militants were using it as a shelter and to store arms and ammunition.

Turkey sent ground troops into northern Syria in August to support Turkey-backed Syrian opposition forces in clearing a border area of Islamic State group militants and to curb Kurdish territorial expansion.

At least 24 Turkish soldiers have been killed so far in the operation, entitled Euphrates Shield.

Associated Press writer Suzan Fraser in Ankara contributed to this report.</s>BEIRUT — The Latest on the development in the Syrian civil war and the aftermath of the assassination of Russia's ambassador to Turkey (all times local):

The International Committee of the Red Cross says 10 more buses have arrived to the west Aleppo countryside in northern Syria evacuating residents from the opposition's last foothold in eastern Aleppo.

The ICRC says 25,000 people have been bused out of east Aleppo since rebels effectively surrendered the area under an Ankara- and Moscow-brokered deal. It's unclear how many remain.

Meanwhile, Syrian state media say several more buses have arrived to the government-controlled Aleppo countryside after evacuating the sick and wounded from the rebel-besieged Shiite villages of Foua and Kfarya.

The swap evacuations are part of the Aleppo cease-fire deal — Syrian rebels besieging the two villages agreed to allow over 2,000 people to leave from there in exchange for the government allowing civilians and rebels to leave eastern Aleppo.

Russian state television has shown a plane landing at the Ankara airport carrying Russian investigators and foreign ministry employees who are to take part in the probe into the assassination of Russia's ambassador to Turkey the day before.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov told the visiting Turkish foreign minister on Tuesday that the presidents of the two countries have agreed that Russian investigators would take part in the probe.

The state-owned Rossiya 24 television broadcast footage of the plane landing in Ankara. The plane would later in the day repatriate the body of Andrei Karlov who was fatally shot at a photo exhibition on Monday.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov says the assassination of the Russian ambassador to Turkey makes Moscow even more determined to press ahead with Syrian talks that will offer "no concessions to the terrorists."

Lavrov is hosting the foreign ministers of Turkey and Iran in Moscow on Tuesday in what was expected to be a major meeting to discuss the Syrian crisis.

Lavrov and the visiting Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu on Tuesday laid flowers to the portrait of Ambassador Andrei Karlov who was shot dead at an exhibition in Ankara.

The Russian minister said in televised comments that President Vladimir Putin and President Recep Tayyip Erdogan late on Monday "agreed this tragedy makes us more decisive in fighting terrorism and makes our today's meeting even more important."

Lavrov says Moscow is willing to seek agreements that will improve the humanitarian situation in Syria and help political procession but "will not offer any concession to terrorists."

Cavusolgu who told Lavrov at the start of the meeting that the attack happened when he was on his way to Moscow offered his condolences and said that "Turkish people are mourning this loss as much as Russia and the people of Russia."

The International Committee of the Red Cross says it has overseen the evacuation of 25,000 people from eastern Aleppo since the rebels effectively surrendered the Syrian rebel enclave under an Ankara- and Moscow-brokered deal.

The figure was provided by Robert Mardini, the ICRC's Mideast regional chief, who posted it on Twitter. Ingy Sedky, the ICRC spokeswoman in Damascus, told the Associated Press that Aleppo "evacuation (are) not over yet" and that there are "still thousands remaining" in eastern Aleppo.

Meanwhile, the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah says Syrian army troops are to enter the rebels' last foothold in Aleppo later in the day, marking the return of the entire city to government control.</s>Thousands were evacuated from the last rebel-held enclave of the city of Aleppo on Monday after a deal was reached to allow people to leave two besieged pro-government villages in nearby Idlib province.

Convoys of buses from eastern Aleppo reached rebel-held areas of countryside to the west of the city in cold winter weather, according to a U.N. official and the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a monitoring group.

At the same time, 10 buses left the Shi’ite Muslim villages of al-Foua and Kefraya, north of Idlib, for government lines in Aleppo, the sources said.

The recapture of Aleppo is Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s biggest victory so far in the nearly six-year-old war, but the fighting is by no means over with large tracts of the country still under the control of insurgent and Islamist groups.

Read more: The graffiti kids: How an act of teenage rebellion sparked the Syrian war

Read more: Aleppo was once 'a warm, welcoming city'

Explainer: The Aleppo evacuation: What we know so far

Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said some 20,000 civilians had been evacuated from Aleppo so far.

The United Nations said nearly 50 children, some critically injured, were rescued from eastern Aleppo, where they had been trapped in an orphanage.

The evacuation of civilians, including wounded people, from the two villages had been demanded by the Syrian army and its allies before they would allow fighters and civilians trapped in Aleppo to depart. The stand-off halted the Aleppo evacuation over the weekend.

“Complex evacuations from East Aleppo and Foua & Kefraya now in full swing. More than 900 buses needed to evacuate all. We must not fail,” Jan Egeland, who chairs the United Nations aid task force in Syria, tweeted.

Ahmad al-Dbis, a medical aid worker heading a team evacuating patients from Aleppo, said 89 buses had left the city. “Some evacuees told us that a few children died from the long wait and the intense cold while they were waiting to evacuate,” he told Reuters.

For those still waiting to leave rebel-held Aleppo, conditions were grim, according to Aref al-Aref, a nurse and photographer there.

“I’m still in Aleppo. I’m waiting for them to evacuate the children and women first. It’s very cold and there’s hunger. It’s a long wait,” he told Reuters. “People are burning wood and clothes to keep warm in the streets.”

Photographs of people evacuated from Aleppo showed large groups of people standing or crouching with their belongings or loading sacks onto trucks before heading off to further destinations.

Children, dressed in winter clothes against the cold, carried small backpacks or played with kittens and one older man, in traditional Arab robes and headdress, sat holding a stick.

Later on Monday, the Security Council will vote in New York on a resolution to allow U.N. staff to monitor the evacuations. The draft resolution was the result of a compromise between Russia and France, and the United States said it was expected to pass unanimously.

On Sunday, some of the buses sent to al-Foua and Kefraya to carry evacuees out were attacked and torched by armed men, who shouted “God is greatest” and brandished their weapons in front of the burning vehicles, according to a video posted online.

That incident threatened to derail the evacuations, the result of intense negotiations between Russia - Assad’s main supporter - and Turkey, which backs some large rebel groups.

The foreign and defense ministers of Russia, Iran and Turkey will hold talks in Moscow on Tuesday aimed at giving fresh impetus for a solution in Aleppo.

At stake is the fate of thousands of people still stuck in the last rebel bastion in Aleppo after a series of sudden advances by the Syrian army and allied Shi’ite militias under an intense bombardment that pulverized large sections of the city.

They have been waiting for the chance to leave Aleppo since the ceasefire and evacuation deal was agreed late last Tuesday, but have been prevented from doing so during days of hold-ups. The weather in Aleppo has been wet and very cold and there is little shelter and few services in the tiny rebel zone.

In the square in Aleppo’s Sukari district, organizers gave every family a number to allow them access to buses.

“Everyone is waiting until they are evacuated. They just want to escape,” said Salah al Attar, a former teacher with his five children, wife and mother.

Thousands of people were evacuated on Thursday, the first to leave under the ceasefire deal that ends fighting in the city where violence erupted in 2012, a year after the start of conflict in other parts of Syria.

They were taken to rebel-held districts of the countryside west of Aleppo. Turkey has said Aleppo evacuees could also be housed in a camp to be constructed in Syria near the Turkish border to the north.

For four years the city was split between a rebel-held eastern sector and the government-held western districts. During the summer, the army and its allies managed to besiege the rebel sector before using intense bombardment and ground assaults to retake it in recent months.

A Reuters reporter who visited recaptured districts of Aleppo in recent days saw large swathes reduced to ruins, with rubble and other debris clogging the streets and sections of the famous Old City all but destroyed.

Assad is backed in the war by Russian air power and Shi’ite militias including Lebanon’s Hezbollah movement and Iraq’s Harakat al-Nujaba. The mostly Sunni rebels include groups supported by Turkey, the United States and Gulf monarchies.

East of Aleppo, several villages held by Islamic State have been captured by the Syrian Democratic Forces, a coalition of militias backed by the United States that includes a strong Kurdish contingent, the Observatory said.

The advance is part of a campaign backed by an international coalition to drive Islamic State from its Syrian capital of Raqqa.
The International Committee of the Red Cross claims that 25,000 residents of the rebel-held territories have been evacuated from Aleppo as Hezbollah warns remaining residents in the former rebel enclave to leave "as quickly as possible".