 BEIRUT (AP) — The Latest on the conflict in Syria, where fighting is still underway in Aleppo despite a cease-fire deal that was to allow opposition fighters and civilians to withdraw (all times local): 
 
 1:20 p.m. 
 
 Iran is congratulating its close ally Syria on driving rebels from Aleppo, where fighting is still underway despite a cease-fire deal that was to allow for the evacuation of opposition fighters and tens of thousands of civilians. It was unclear on Wednesday when residents would be allowed to leave east Aleppo and whether the deal would hold.  ALEPPO, Syria/BEIRUT (Reuters) - An evacuation of rebel-held districts of Aleppo is back on track and expected to begin within hours, officials on both sides of the war said late on Wednesday, a retreat that would mark a major victory for Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and end years of fighting. ___ 
 
 11:15 a.m. 
 
 A legal adviser to Syrian opposition factions says an evacuation deal for Aleppo is behind held up by Iranian fighters who have renewed shelling of the rebel part of the city. An official in the pro-Damascus military alliance confirmed the truce deal was on, and said about 15,000 people would be evacuated from the majority Shi’ite villages, Foua and Kefraya, in return for the evacuation from Aleppo of “militants and their families and whoever wants to leave among civilians”. "The clashes are violent and bombardment is very heavy... it seems as though everything (the ceasefire) is finished," Rami Abdulrahman, director of the British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) monitoring group, said. Image copyright AFP Image caption Buses were brought in for evacuations but have not been used 
 
 Late on Tuesday, Russian UN Ambassador Vitaly Churkin told an emergency session of the UN Security Council that "military actions in eastern Aleppo are over".
– Looks like the "complete meltdown of humanity" in Aleppo will continue for at least another day. The ceasefire declared in the war-ravaged Syrian city Tuesday appears, to nobody's surprise, to have broken down, leaving tens of thousands of civilians in rebel-held areas stranded in desperate conditions. Reuters reports that a planned evacuation has stalled amid fierce fighting and what rebels say is a resumption of airstrikes by Russian-backed Syrian government forces. Buses that were supposed to evacuate fighters and civilians to rebel-held areas outside the city returned to their depots Wednesday morning, the AP reports. Activists say Iran-backed militias and Syrian government forces blocked the evacuation after demanding that the Russia- and Turkey-brokered deal be changed to allow the evacuation of their own injured fighters from towns in rebel-held zones, reports the BBC. "The sectarian militias want to resume the massacre in Aleppo and the world has to act to prevent this sectarian slaughter led by Iran," a member of rebel group Noureddine Zinkitells the Guardian. "The opposition will continue to abide by the agreement." Russia, which claims thousands of civilians and hundreds of fighters left the remaining rebel-held portion of Aleppo over the last 24 hours, says Syrian forces are responding to rebel attacks, and they expect resistance to end over the next two or three days.