BEIRUT: Russia’s foreign minister said Thursday that Moscow and Washington have agreed to meet to discuss the withdrawal of Syrian rebels from Aleppo.
Sergey Lavrov, speaking in Germany after talks with Secretary of State John Kerry, said military experts and diplomats would meet Saturday in Geneva to work out details of the rebels’ exit from Aleppo’s eastern neighborhoods, along with civilians who were willing to leave the city.
Lavrov said the Syrian army suspended combat action late Thursday to allow some 8,000 civilians to leave the city in a convoy spreading across a 3-mile route. However, opposition activists said there was no halt to the government offensive.
“Battles are intense,” said a message from a rebel operation room shared with the Associated Press. Other residents reported warplanes firing from machine guns at rebel positions and artillery shells falling in the remaining rebel-controlled districts.
In Washington, State Department spokeswoman Elizabeth Trudeau said the U.S. was focused on de-escalating the violence in Aleppo to allow aid into the city and enable people wishing to stay in their homes to do so.
She said Kerry and Lavrov continued talks on Thursday with the goal of securing a cease-fire and the “safe departure of those who wish to leave the city.”
Earlier, in Geneva, U.N. special adviser Jan Egeland said efforts to evacuate hundreds of wounded people from eastern Aleppo had stalled following a deadly attack this week on a Russian military hospital. “It is with bitterness and frustration that we have to report that we have not been able even to evacuate the wounded,” Egeland said.