Aleppo battle: Hopes rise for evacuation of rebel-held areas

Hopes have risen that a planned evacuation of rebel-held parts of the Syrian city of Aleppo will now begin soon, after an earlier deal collapsed.

Rebel sources said a new truce had been in effect from 03:00GMT and evacuations would take place early on Thursday.

Sources from the Syrian military, the pro-government Hezbollah and Russian media said preparations were under way.

Rebel fighters and civilians had been due to leave early on Wednesday, but a ceasefire collapsed.

Reuters news agency quoted one Syrian official source on Thursday morning as saying that the "operation to organise the departure of gunmen from eastern Aleppo has now started".

A media unit run by Hezbollah, the Lebanese Shia Muslim movement backing the Syrian government, said there had been "big complications" but that "intensive contacts between the responsible parties... led to re-consolidating a ceasefire to exit armed fighters from eastern districts in the next few hours".

Soldiers from Russia - Syria's ally - would lead the rebels out, escorting them on a corridor towards Idlib city on buses and ambulances, with surveillance drones monitoring the situation, Russian media said.

A statement from the Russian Centre for the Reconciliation of Opposing Sides in Syria, part of Russia's ministry of defence, said Syrian authorities had guaranteed the safety of all members of the armed groups who decided to leave Aleppo.

The Red Cross and Syrian Arab Red Crescent confirmed they would be involved in the operation to evacuate wounded but that it had not yet started.

Ismail Al Abdullah, a volunteer for the White Helmets civil defence group, told the BBC that buses had now entered the area in which he was working and that he hoped the evacuation would now take place.

But the White Helmets tweeted that one senior volunteer had been shot and injured by a sniper while clearing an evacuation route for ambulances.

An ambulance service official in eastern Aleppo said a convoy of ambulances had been shot at, with three people injured.

BBC Arabic's Asaf Aboud, in Aleppo, says there was some shelling by rebels and air strikes by government forces overnight.

The new deal should allow the simultaneous evacuation of two villages - Foah and Kefraya - being besieged by rebels in north-western Syria.

Syria's government and its ally Iran had insisted the evacuation from eastern Aleppo could happen only when those villages were evacuated.

On Wednesday morning, buses and ambulances had been brought to evacuate rebel fighters and their families - only to be turned away shortly afterwards.

Hours after the first agreement - brokered mainly by Russia and Turkey - collapsed, air strikes resumed over rebel-held territory, where up to 50,000 civilians remain.

The UN said raids by the Syrian government and its allies on an area "packed with civilians" most probably violated international law.