Turkey, Russia, Iran to meet today

fail,” Jan Egeland, who chairs the United Nations aid task force in Syria, tweeted. Ahmad Al-Dbis, a medical aid worker heading a team evacuating patients from Aleppo, said 89 buses had left the city. “Some evacuees told us that a few children died from the long wait and the intense cold while they were waiting to evacuate,” he told Reuters.

For those still in opposition-held Aleppo, conditions were grim, according to Aref Al-Aref, a nurse and photographer there.

“I’m still in Aleppo. I’m waiting for them to evacuate the children and women first. It’s very cold and there’s hunger. It’s a long wait,” he told Reuters. “People are burning wood and clothes to keep warm in the streets.”

Photographs of people evacuated from Aleppo showed large groups of people standing or crouching with their belongings or loading sacks onto trucks. Children in winter clothes carried small backpacks or played with kittens. One older man, in traditional Arab robes and headdress, sat holding a stick.

On Sunday, some of the buses sent to Al-Foua and Kefraya to carry evacuees out were attacked and torched by armed men.

That incident threatened to derail the evacuations, the result of intense negotiations between Russia — Assad’s main supporter — and Turkey, which backs some large opposition groups.