Thousands of civilians and rebels left Aleppo on Thursday under an evacuation deal that will allow Syria's regime to take full control of the city after years of fighting.
Photo from video
The International Committee of the Red Cross said the operation could take days as US Secretary of State John Kerry warned action was needed to prevent a Srebrenica-style massacre with tens of thousands of civilians still trapped in the city.
Three convoys left Aleppo carrying wounded civilians, fighters and their families, with civilians mostly leaving on buses and ambulances.
"Some 3,000 civilians and more than 40 wounded, including children, were brought out," the head of the International Committee for the Red Cross in Syria, Marianne Gasser, said after the first two convoys left.
The withdrawal began a month to the day after Syrian government forces launched a major offensive to retake all of Aleppo, and will hand the regime its biggest victory in more than five years of civil war.
In a video message to Syrians, President Bashar al-Assad said the "liberation" of Aleppo was "history in the making".
US chief diplomat Kerry said what had already happened in the city was "unconscionable" but warned over the fate of "tens of thousands of lives that are now concentrated into a very small area of Aleppo".
UN envoy Staffan de Mistura said Thursday that around 50,000 people were still trapped, including 40,000 civilians.
The evacuations were announced on Thursday, after an initial plan for civilians and fighters to leave rebel-held parts of the city collapsed the previous day amid renewed clashes.
The defence ministry in Moscow said Syrian authorities had guaranteed the safety of the rebels leaving the city.
The head of the UN-backed humanitarian taskforce for Syria, Jan Egeland, said in Geneva that most of those evacuated from Aleppo would head to opposition stronghold Idlib, in Syria's northwest.
The UN Security Council will meet Friday around 1700 GMT to discuss the crisis in Aleppo in response to a request by France, which is calling for international observers to be sent to monitor the situation and ensure aid deliveries.
European Union leaders also tried to pile pressure on Russia Thursday, urging the Kremlin to protect civilians, but EU President Donald Tusk however acknowledged the bloc was largely powerless.
"We know we are not effective enough. Unfortunately I know who is effective enough, not in humanitarian assistance but in bombing," Tusk said.
Russia meanwhile accused the rebels of having violated the ceasefire as violence erupted before Wednesday's planned evacuation while Turkey accused Assad's regime and its allies of blocking people from leaving.
