Russia says Aleppo combat suspended, residents say no let-up

He described it as the largest operation yet to remove civilians from eastern districts.

According to Mr Lavrov, Mr Assad’s position has changed.

In a blistering three-week offensive, Syrian government forces have seized about 80 percent of east Aleppo, a stronghold for rebel groups since 2012.

A BBC reporter in Aleppo says while fighting appears to have eased, there is no sign it has completely stopped.

“We are exhausted. There is a lot of death and unprecedented destruction”, he said.

“If that occurs, we obviously would welcome that development”, said White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest Thursday.

Kerry said he and Lavrov had talked in Hamburg, Germany, on Wednesday for about an hour “about the extraordinarily dire situation in Aleppo and we exchanged some ideas about it”.

The BBC’s Lyse Doucet in Aleppo says officials there are preparing for another exodus, as families try to flee under fire in an extremely dire situation. We saw a tide of people scrambling through a hole smashed through a wall. And pauses only succeed if they’re agreed by all sides and there’s no sign of that yet.

UN envoy Staffan de Mistura briefed the Security Council on Thursday ahead of talks in Geneva on Saturday between the United States and Russian Federation on a possible deal that would allow civilians and rebel fighters to leave Aleppo.

“Today 150,000 people are threatened with extermination”.

The hope is that talks in Geneva will move quickly to a Syria-wide cease-fire that will allow humanitarian aid deliveries to hundreds of thousands in besieged communities across the western third of the country, and to restart political talks between the opposition and the government of President Bashar al-Assad over a political transition.

“But it will be a huge step towards this end”, he said.

Government forces and allies have recently made rapid gains against insurgents and have rejected the idea of a ceasefire unless rebels leave the rest of Aleppo.

Tawfik Chamaa, a representative of the Union of Syrian Medical Relief Organisations (UOSSM), said 1500 people needed medical evacuation, but any evacuation should have global observers to prevent them being “executed or diverted on the way to hospital”.

The Hashed al-Shaabi (Popular Mobilisation) paramilitary force has been fighting on a western front and on Thursday announced it had retaken the town of Tal Abtah after fierce fighting that lasted days.

The bodies of 11 people who died at the facility after being caught in crossfire or failing to receive medication were also retrieved, the humanitarian organization said.

United Nations (UN) Syria envoy Staffan de Mistura said on Thursday he planned to meet “people around the team” of US President-elect Donald Trump. He instead called for the establishment of humanitarian corridors.

“The member states that are supposed to help us get access to civilians in the crossfire are poles apart in how they regard what is happening in Syria”, he told reporters after a weekly Syriahumanitarian meeting led by the United States and Russian Federation.

SANA said Syrian forces on Wednesday established control over two districts north of the Aleppo Citadel in the heart of the city — the Aghiour and Bab al-Hadid neighborhoods — after rebels abandoned positions and retreated further south.