After days of negotiations and stalled deals, a new agreement has led to the evacuations of thousands of civilians from eastern Aleppo, according to latest reports.
The BBC reported that 4,500 civilians had left the besieged region so far on Monday, as they left to other opposition held areas to the west of Aleppo. Turkey’s foreign minister Mevlut Cavusogulu said that 20,000 people had been evacuated so far and that efforts were continuing.
Buses also left the Shi'ite Muslim villages of al-Foua and Kefraya, north of Idlib, which have been surrounded by opposition forces, as part of the newly brokered deal.
"Complex evacuations from East Aleppo and Foua & Kefraya now in full swing,” said Jan Egeland, the head of the UN humanitarian task force on Syria. “More than 900 buses needed to evacuate all. We must not fail."
An earlier deal fell through on Sunday, after evacuations from Shi'ite villages were halted with opposition fighters setting fire to several buses arranged to evacuate civilians.
On Monday, the UN Security Council voted on a resolution on whether to send international observers to oversee the evacuation process. The resolution which was unanimously adopted called on the "UN and other relevant institutions to carry out adequate, neutral monitoring" of the evacuations.
See more from the BBC here, Reuters here and the New York Times here.