“The people of Aleppo should not be forced to choose between fleeing their homes and remaining under attack in a besieged area”, said IRC’s acting Middle East director Zoe Daniels.
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Syrian President Bashar Assad’s government and its Russian allies declared a joint humanitarian operation for the besieged area on Thursday, bombarding it with leaflets telling fighters to surrender and civilians to leave.
Kerry – who has spoken twice with Moscow in the past day and met with his Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov on Tuesday in Laos – said cooperation between Moscow and Washington could turn sour if the announcement proves deceitful.
The Syrian army received the families, who reached the Salahuddien districts, transporting them to temporary shelters by busses, said the report.
Syrian state television on Saturday showed scores of mostly women gathered in a government-controlled area of the city, saying how conditions in rebel-held areas were hard and chanting praise for Syrian President Bashar al Assad.
The UN has requested a 48-hour ceasefire in Syria’s five-year civil war to allow people to leave safely.
The government completely closed the main road into rebel-held areas of Aleppo on July 17, besieging the 300,000 people living there.
This still image from Syrian state TV video, shows young men with their faces covered surrendering to government forces, in Aleppo, Syria.
A Russian army spokesperson said 85 civilians and 29 fighters had left via the corridors on Friday and 52 civilians and 24 fighters on Saturday.
United Nations Syrian envoy Staffan de Mistura on Friday urged Russian Federation to let the UN take charge of humanitarian corridors allowing civilians to escape the besieged city of Aleppo.
Aleppo has been roughly divided between government and rebels in the east since mid-2012, and the front line runs through several neighbourhoods including Salaheddine.
He said that if the United Nations allows residents to travel safely to other opposition held-areas, this could reassure people that it is safe to leave and would reduce the number of people killed in the siege or from airstrikes.
But only a few Aleppo residents were able to leave eastern neighborhoods through the passages before rebels prevented them from fleeing, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.
De Mistura voiced provisional support for the humanitarian passages proposed by Moscow, but said the United Nations wanted to see key changes to the plan.
“That’s our job”, he said.
Observatory’s chief Rami Adurrahman said another 13 people were killed in the strikes but that he could not say if they were Islamic State fighters or civilians. He said four more corridors were in the process of being created. The group, which relies on a network of activists in Syria, says the hospital was no longer operational.
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Many residents said they were afraid to cross into regime-held territory from government-controlled routes. The encirclement set the stage for a prolonged siege that the government hopes will eventually starve out and force the rebels to surrender, a tactic Assad’s forces have used elsewhere, including in the central city of Homs.
