Pro-government forces in Syria are on the brink of fully recapturing the city of Aleppo from opposition forces, after a month of intense bombing accompanied by a ferocious ground offensive that has forced rebels and civilians into hiding.
Talks between Russia — an ally of Syrian President Bashar Assad — and members of the opposition, aimed at establishing a cease-fire and evacuating civilians from the city, are being mediated by Turkish officials in Ankara.
The rebels announced late Tuesday morning Eastern Time that they had reached a cease-fire deal with Russia to evacuate some opposition forces and civilians from the city.
About 40,000 people will be allowed to leave, a source within the opposition with knowledge of the talks told Business Insider, though rebels are still pressing for more to be evacuated.
A Turkish official tweeted that the "opposition's armed groups also can leave Aleppo, following the civilian population." The official added: "They may go to Idlib, according to the agreement."
It is unclear whether the regime has agreed to the terms of the cease-fire, which had not yet been formally announced.
The deal came amid reports that pro-government forces, including regime troops and Shiite militias backed by Iran — another Assad ally — had summarily executed dozens of civilians, including women and children, as they moved to clear rebel-held areas on Monday.
Many of the civilians executed by pro-government forces were injured and awaiting treatment in the city's makeshift medical facilities, reports from the scene said. Others were trying to flee their homes.
It's "a complete meltdown of humanity," United Nations humanitarian spokesman Jens Laerke said.
People fleeing deeper into the remaining rebel-held areas of Aleppo on Monday.Abdalrhman Ismail/Reuters
The government forces also reportedly set fire to a building used to house people who had been displaced in the fighting, with possibly more than 100 children trapped inside.
"According to alarming reports from a doctor in the city, many children, possibly more than 100, unaccompanied or separated from their families, are trapped in a building, under heavy attack in east Aleppo," Unicef said in a statement. "We urge all parties to the conflict to allow the safe and immediate evacuation of all children."
Employees at the underground Hayat Medical Center in Aleppo, run by the Syrian American Medical Society, were also executed by pro-government forces on Monday, said Mouaz Moustafa, the executive director of the Syrian Emergency Task Force.
"They literally executed each staff member," Moustafa, the political director of the nonprofit, pro-opposition organization United for a Free Syria, told Business Insider.
Assad's forces are also using forced conscription to take over and clear areas of the besieged half of the city. Images circulated by pro-government sources on Monday showed Syrian men and boys from east Aleppo standing in front of government forces inside a detention camp.
A police brigadier general addressing men who were evacuated from the eastern districts of Aleppo as part of a preparation Sunday to begin their military service. Omar Sanadiki/Reuters
An estimated 100,000 people are still trapped in a "hellish corner" of less than one mile of territory in eastern Aleppo that hasn't yet fallen to government forces, said Rupert Colville, a spokesman for the United Nations' human-rights office. He said in a press conference that the UN had received reports of pro-government forces killing least 82 civilians, including 11 women and 13 children, in four different neighborhoods.
Civilians trying to flee their homes were also being shot in the street by pro-Assad forces, said Laerke, the UN humanitarian spokesman.
"We're seeing the most cruel form of savagery in Aleppo, and the regime and its supporters are responsible for this," Turkey's foreign minister, Mevlut Cavusoglu, said in a press conference from Ankara. "The wounded are not being let out, and people are dying of starvation."
A nurse living in eastern Aleppo told The New York Times that some rebels, too, had threatened those trying to flee the city.
"Why do you want to go to those who are bombing you?" the nurse said one fighter asked her family as they were trying to flee to government-held territory.
"We are dead either way," one civilian replied.
Syrians who have been evacuated from eastern Aleppo reaching out for Russian food aid in the government-controlled Jibreen area in Aleppo on November 30. The text on the bag, which shows the Syrian and Russian national flags, reads in Arabic: "Russia is with you."Omar Sanadiki/Reuters
The Russian Ministry of Defense said on Tuesday that "tales" of hundreds of thousands of civilians trapped in Aleppo were "Russophobic chatter" and that any civilians remaining in the city were being used by rebels as human shields.
The operation to take Aleppo back from the rebels was "successful and humane in every sense in regard to civilians," the Defense Ministry spokesman Maj. Gen. Igor Konashenkov said.
Moustafa, meanwhile, said "horrendous war crimes" were being perpetrated against civilians as neighborhoods fell, one by one, to regime troops.
"And it's all being done with Russian aerial cover, including cluster bombs and barrel bombs," he said.
He said he had received reports that the regime was also using chemical weapons, such as chlorine and white phosphorus, to clear the rebel-held areas. Those reports are unconfirmed.
"Why should I lie? I'm not well," Malek, an activist inside Aleppo, told The New York Times. "We are people, are being deleted from the human map. We have two neighborhoods and one street, and the regime will keep bombing this small area."
Smoke rising as seen from a government-held area of Aleppo on Monday.Omar Sanadik/Reuters
The US has been shut out of the new round of negotiations hosted in Ankara, two sources close to the opposition have told Business Insider.
The talks were initially aimed at securing a deal to deliver humanitarian aid to eastern Aleppo in exchange for the evacuation of extremists groups like the former Al Qaeda affiliate Jabhat Fateh al-Sham. Separate negotiations between Russia and the US were apparently underway simultaneously to evacuate rebel groups from Aleppo, allowing civilians to stay and receive humanitarian aid.
The rebels proposed instead that civilians be evacuated from the city, and they are not making preparations to evacuate.
"The rebels are holding and fighting, knowing they face certain death," Moustafa said.
Syria's chief opposition coordinator, Riad Hijab, said on Monday that the rebels "will not make any concessions."
"If Assad and his allies think that a military advance in certain quarters of Aleppo will signify that we will make concessions, then (I say) that will not happen," Hijab told reporters in Paris after meeting with French President Francois Hollande. "We will not make any concessions."
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