Paris: Around 50,000 people, the majority civilians, were still trapped in eastern Aleppo even as an evacuation deal was under way, the UN peace envoy for Syria and French foreign minister said on Thursday.
"There are 50,000 people, including 40,000 civilians unfortunate enough to live in that part of the city. The rest are fighters, numbering between 1,500 and 5,000, and their families," the UN's Staffan de Mistura told reporters in Paris, alongside France's Jean-Marc Ayrault.
Turkey had earlier said 80,000 to 100,000 civilians were likely still trapped in eastern Aleppo.
"Our priority is for our UN colleagues to be present with the people (who have been evacuated) and that the fighters be respected under the terms of this deal," De Mistura said.
Meanwhile, the World Health Organisation, the Red Cross and the Red Crescent have been reportedly told to leave area of Aleppo where civilians were being evacuated, the organizations say, according to SkyNews.
The reason behind the order and it was not immediately who ordered their withdrawal from the city.
Under the terms of the evacuation agreement negotiated by regime backer Russia and rebel supporter Turkey, the people currently being evacuated from eastern Aleppo will be taken to the northwestern province of Idlib, an opposition bastion.
"We don't know what will happen in Idlib. If there is no political agreement and a ceasefire, Idlib will become the next Aleppo," De Mistura said.
Ayrault meanwhile repeated France's call for "the deployment, as quickly as possible, of UN observers, of all UN personnel who are already on the ground, and who can be deployed in the coming hours."
A UN Security Council meeting requested by France, and which is expected to take place on Friday, "will specifically examine the deployment of observers in order to ensure there are no abuses, no acts of revenge, and that the civilian population is protected".
He added: "This can be done extremely quickly."
Ayrault meanwhile urged "a ceasefire for the whole country and for a return to negotiations".
Hundreds of people were evacuated from eastern Aleppo on Thursday, after a devastating month-long regime offensive carried out with the backing of Russian war planes.
Assad calls it 'history in the making'
Around 1,000 people were evacuated from the remaining rebel-held districts of the Syrian city of Aleppo on Thursday, part of a process that could become one of the greatest victories of the war for President Bashar Assad and a major blow to his foes.
After new violence in Syria's second-largest city stopped the evacuation Wednesday and delayed it Thursday morning, long lines of government buses and ambulances crossed into the rebel-held enclave and returned with about 1,000 evacuees, according to Russia, which helped carry out the agreement, and the World Health Organization, which monitored it.
Assad hailed the evacuation in a video released by his office, comparing it to big historical events.
"I want to confirm that what is happening today is history that is being written by every Syrian civilian," Assad said, smiling in a dark blue suit. "Its writing did not start today. It started about six years ago when the crisis and the war on Syria began."
If successful, the evacuation deal will signal a major turning point in Syria's nearly six-year conflict. Since early in the war, Aleppo, once the country's industrial center, has been split, with the government holding the west and rebels holding many neighborhoods in the east.
But military aid for the Syrian government from Iran, Russia and the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah turned the tide in the government's favour, allowing it to surround the rebels.
The loss of any foothold in Aleppo would be a major blow to the opposition, which would then hold sway in only one of Syria's provincial capitals, Idlib, where the Syrian branch of al-Qaida is a major force.
The evacuation deal was reached between Russia, which backs the Syrian government, and Turkey, which backs the rebels, after months of airstrikes and heavy shelling that left entire neighborhoods in ruins and killed hundreds of people. Rebels in the east also shelled government-held areas, killing civilians there, too.
The evacuation began Wednesday morning, but soon collapsed when militia fighters allied with the Syrian government and unhappy with the deal opened fire on vehicles bringing people out, according to opposition activists.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which opposes the government and tracks the conflict from Britain, said the presence of 250 foreign fighters among those to be evacuated also complicated the deal because the Syrian government wanted to detain them for interrogation.
It remained unclear how that issue was resolved.
The White Helmets, a group of volunteer emergency workers, said on Twitter that one of its members had been struck by a bullet fired by a government sniper.
"Even the civil defense got wounded," Shanan said. "Who would dare to leave?"
But the evacuation continued, and by midday, Syrian state television was showing live footage of buses and ambulances returning to the government-held side of the city. Under the agreement, civilians evacuated from eastern Aleppo can either stay in government-controlled sectors or continue to rebel-held areas to the west. Rebels may only go to other rebel-held areas.
Television footage of the Aleppo skyline aired Thursday showed columns of smoke rising from heavily damaged buildings, apparently because rebels had set fire to their headquarters and storehouses before fleeing or because residents had burned belongings they feared would be looted by government troops.
Earlier, the Russian Defense Ministry said it would use drones to monitor the evacuation of rebels and their families, who were to be transported on 20 buses accompanied by 10 ambulances that were to lead them through a humanitarian corridor, Reuters reported.
On Thursday, Lt. Gen. Viktor Poznikhir of the Russian military's General Staff said that more than 1,000 people had been moved Thursday and were being taken to rebel-held areas in Idlib. He said that 900 militants had been killed in the offensive against the rebel-held neighborhoods and that more than 108,000 civilians had fled the area, including more than 3,000 rebels.
Speaking to journalists in Geneva, Jan Egeland, the U.N. humanitarian adviser for Syria, said an estimated 50,000 people had fled eastern Aleppo.
Egeland said that although the world body had not been party to the evacuation talks, Russia had asked it to assist with the process.
The United Nations has not been able to provide protection for those fleeing, he said, because its workers were not given access. Reports of summary killings and other atrocities have surfaced as Syrian government forces have reclaimed rebel neighborhoods.
"We have not been witnesses to atrocities that we know have been committed by all sides in this horrific war," Egeland said.
Crushing the opposition in Aleppo would be a major strategic and psychological victory for the government of Assad and its backers, who have long considered all the rebels to be terrorists bent on destroying the state and have used tremendous, indiscriminate force against areas controlled by the opposition.
The plight of those trapped in eastern Aleppo as supplies have dwindled and destruction has spread has caused anguish among humanitarian workers.
"It took 4,000 years to build Aleppo; one generation managed to tear it down," Egeland said.
