Russia says combat in Aleppo halted; rebels say no pause

BEIRUT — Russia said the Syrian army was suspending combat operations in Aleppo late Thursday to allow for the evacuation of civilians from besieged rebel-held neighborhoods, but residents and fighters reported no let-up in the bombing and shelling campaign on the opposition’s ever-shrinking enclave.

Russian Foreign Minister 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. Other residents reported warplanes firing machine guns at rebel positions and artillery shells falling in the remaining rebel-controlled districts.

The rebel defenses have buckled amid the wideranging government offensive, which opened a number of fronts at once and was preceded by an intensive aerial campaign.

More than three-quarters of the rebel sector has now fallen, including the symbolically important ancient Aleppo quarters.

More than 30,000 of the estimated 275,000 residents of the besieged eastern enclave have fled to western Aleppo.