Plans to evacuate besieged rebel districts of Aleppo were under threat on Wednesday as renewed air strikes and shelling rocked the city.
Iran, one of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s main backers in the battle that has all but ended four years of rebel resistance in the city, imposed new conditions, saying it wanted the simultaneous evacuation of wounded from two villages besieged by rebel fighters, according to rebel and U.N. sources.
There was no sign of that happening. Insurgents fired shells at the two majority Shi’ite villages, Foua and Kefraya, in Idlib province west of Aleppo, causing some casualties, the British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.
A ceasefire brokered on Tuesday by Russia, Assad’s most powerful ally, and Turkey was intended to end years of fighting in the city, giving the Syrian leader his biggest victory in more than five years of war.
But air strikes, shelling and gunfire erupted on Wednesday and Turkey accused government forces of breaking the truce. Syrian state television said rebel shelling had killed six people.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov predicted however that rebel resistance would last no more than two or three days. The defence ministry in Moscow said the rebels now controlled an enclave of only 2.5 square km (1 square mile).
Turkey was in contact with Iran, Russia and the United States to try and ensure the evacuation of civilians and rebel fighters from Aleppo.
Officials in the military alliance backing Assad could not be reached immediately for comment on why the evacuation, expected to start in the early hours of Wednesday, had stalled.
Nobody had left by dawn under the plan, according to a Reuters witness waiting at the departure point, where 20 buses stood with engines running but showed no sign of moving into rebel districts.
People in eastern Aleppo packed their bags and burned personal belongings, fearing looting by the Syrian army and its Iranian-backed militia allies.
