Philip Luther, director of Amnesty’s Middle East and North Africa program, said the corridors were “not a substitute for allowing impartial humanitarian relief for civilians who remain in opposition-held areas of the city or other besieged areas, many of whom will be skeptical about government promises”.
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Dozens of families were reportedly among the evacuees who passed through the passage in the Salaheddin neighbourhood.
The reported crossings were the first major movement of people from the besieged eastern districts of the city, after Russian Federation and the Syrian government announced on Thursday a joint plan to open up three corridors to give civilians, as well as rebels willing to surrender, a way out.
The Syrian army received the families, who reached the Salahuddien districts, transporting them to temporary shelters by busses, said the report.
The government completely closed the main road into the rebel-held parts of Aleppo on July 17.
The agency carried photos showing dozens of people, mostly women and children, walking past soldiers and boarding buses.
State television also broadcast footage it said showed residents crossing from the east to the west.
Aleppo, Syria’s biggest city before the war, has been divided since 2012 into government and rebel sectors.
The civilians were “besieged by the terrorist groups in the eastern neighborhoods” and crossed into the Salahaddin section of the city, where Syrian army units sent them to makeshift shelters, the news agency reported. Russian Federation also said four more humanitarian corridors would be opened to add to the three already functioning.
No aid has entered east Aleppo for weeks, and worldwide agencies have warned that residents there risk starvation.
On Friday, the United Nations envoy to Syria said the corridors should be administered by the UN and that there should be a 48-hour ceasefire for people to leave safely.
The UN voiced provisional support for the humanitarian corridors, but its Syria envoy Staffan de Mistura urged that the body be allowed to take charge of the routes.
“How can you expect people to want to walk through a corridor, thousands of them, while there is shelling, bombing, fighting?” added De Mistura.
The Syrian opposition, however, says the corridors are a government ploy to recapture all of Aleppo.
The brutal message to our people is – ‘leave or starve, ‘ ” HNC member Bassma Kodmani said.
Russia, an ally of the Syrian government, announced on Thursday that four exit corridors would be opened in Aleppo for civilians and rebels. As such, civilians trapped there should not be forced to leave, and if any do want to leave, the choice should be their own.
“Our suggestion is to Russian Federation to actually leave the corridors being established at their initiative to us”, de Mistura told reporters in Geneva.
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Analyst Karim Bitar from the French think-tank IRIS said: “Aleppo residents are facing a bad existential dilemma, they often have to chose between risking starvation or risking to die while fleeing”.
